


Whoops, I slipped

by Reesachan (Clymenestra)



Series: Whoops, I slipped [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, Bath Time, Clint Barton is a Disaster, Clint Barton is a goof, Deaf Clint Barton, Disabled Character, Found Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I take the Marie Kondo approach to canon, Marvel Bingo 2019, Nap Time, Physically disabled character, Platonically, Speech Disorders, Steve Rogers is scared of messing up, Tony is just frustrated because his body refuses to cooperate with him no matter what he does, Tony is very bad at pretending to be a kid, WIP Big Bang 2019, anything that doesn't spark joy will be ignored, even when occupying a child's body, everyone lives in avengers tower, except for his hatred of naps, forced to share a bed, get your minds out of the gutter, potty training, that part is pretty convincing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-13
Updated: 2019-10-26
Packaged: 2020-08-20 22:30:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 27,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20235424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clymenestra/pseuds/Reesachan
Summary: Tony's head hurt like a bitch. There was something off, but he couldn't remember-And he wasn't alone.He slurred out, “Diss, lice.” The lights dimmed. Thank fuck for high quality speech recognition protocols. He carefully cracked an eye open, and his startled gaze met the eyes of one (1) Steven Grant Rogers, US Captain – aka Captain America – from far closer than he would have expected possible. Had he—? Please, God, don't let him have gotten so drunk that he'd nailed Stars and Stripes and didn't even manage to retain the memory of riding his flagpole!“Hey there,” Steve's voice came out in a sleepy and gravelly tone, “How are you feeling, buddy?”That... was not the type of nickname that someone expected to hear post-sex. That was a distinctly friend zone kind of nickname. What had happened last night?He was propped up against Steve Rogers's chest. The hands that met his eyes when he moved to shield them from the light didn’t look all that familiar, though. The fingers were short and stubby, and they led to hairless arms.Right! The explosion. He'd been knocked out. And now he was... tiny. And hairless? And having trouble speaking. What the fuck was going on?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story is the first in a series of three. The first story is almost completed and will be posted over the course of the next few weeks. While the story itself was started independent of any challenges, I've used both the Marvel Bingo and the WIP Big Bang to help me maintain motivation throughout because this story is bigger than any other I've written in the past. As a result, several of the chapters will be tagged with different prompts they fill. 
> 
> This particular chapter is told from Tony's perspective and Tony's very much off his game right now between the de-aging and the minor concussion he's sustained, so he sounds more childish here than he will throughout the rest of the fic. His adult brain will take over more in subsequent chapters, although the childish body and its hormones are going to affect his emotional reactivity throughout the course of the fic.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ### Banner by: [afteriwake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/afteriwake/pseuds/afteriwake)
> 
> [Afteriwake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/afteriwake/pseuds/afteriwake) made me an [awesome fanmix](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/WIPBigBang2019/works/20626427) with songs inspired by each of the chapters in my story, so I'm adding those songs to the notes of each chapter in case people want to listen to the associated music. The song inspired by this chapter was [The Nightingale](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kY7drU9u5zs) by Dan Milner.

The explosion shook the lab, knocking Tony back with a powerful burst. He woke up in a room full of rubble and dust. Somehow he'd landed under a half-collapsed table, which was probably the only reason he hadn't sustained any injuries more serious than the knock to the head and a number of scrapes and contusions.

It hurt and he couldn't breathe and he couldn't remember exactly what had happened and it hurt and he was alone and he wanted Jarvis and he wanted Steve and it hurt and no one was going to come for him because no one ever came for him and he always had to save himself from everything and he couldn't breathe and it hurt.

Tony burst into tears.

He sobbed once, quietly, and felt big fat tears rolling down his cheeks where he scrubbed at them with his...

...wait.

Something was wrong.

Why was he crying? He'd outgrown that reaction to pain by the time he was around eight or nine years old and had figured out that pain was a fact of life and tears did nothing to help.

It felt strange to sit here with tears rolling down his face and a strange pressure in his chest. This wasn't like the pressure of the arc reactor, it just... squeezed? And was that snot dripping out of his nose?

Yup.

Gross. Who knew crying made your nose run?

He scrubbed at that with the back of his hand as well. Not like it could make him any filthier than the dust and detritus surrounding him already had.

“Tony?” He heard a voice calling for him from the far end of the lab.

He sniffled quietly. He wanted to respond and summon his rescuer to his side, but he didn't want anyone to see him like this. He felt embarrassed and ashamed to be caught out crying. The pain and longing were overwhelming his senses, but he couldn't figure out why they were so strong. This was nothing. There was barely any bleeding, nothing was broken, there was absolutely no reason for him to be reacting this way.

“Tony!” The voice was getting louder.

He shrank back under the cover of the table, trying to stifle the sounds he was making.

It was no use. Footsteps approached his hiding place. He could see boots nearing the table. They looked like Captain America's boots.

Capsicle. Steve Rogers. Captain Steve?

His brain was in a jumble, and that scared him more than anything else. This was worse than a broken body. Bones could be fixed. Missing bits could be supplemented with prostheses. He could do anything as long as his brain worked, but if that was compromised—

Realizing that his reactions were off and his thinking was skewed was terrifying.

He'd hit his head hard enough to knock himself unconscious. That wasn't good. He hoped it was just a concussion. Maybe it would sort itself out over time. He hoped. Maybe. Possibly.

But he was scared and he could feel his breath hitch in his chest.

Maybes weren't guarantees. Something was wrong with his head, and he could feel the wrongness suffusing his thoughts and reactions and everything about how he was responding to this situation.

Something was very, very wrong and there was a feeling of foreboding seeping into his bones.

Traumatic brain injuries could cause permanent damage. What if his brain never recovered?

He'd be useless if that happened. He'd lose everything. No one would want him around anymore if he couldn't provide them with new toys and inventions to keep their attention. People didn't like him for who he was as a person, they liked him for the marvelous things he came up with. It was the one thing he had going for him.

Well, that and the money, but he liked the hangers on who were there for the cold hard cash even less than he liked the people who were there because they liked the things he did with his brain. At least the latter were there because of something to do with who he was as a person. It wasn't everything, but it was enough most days.

His chest felt even tighter and it was getting really hard to breathe. He could feel the wheezing gasps emanating from his throat, but he couldn't seem to get air in no matter how hard he tried.

A face moved to peer under the table. Familiar blue eyes stared at him in confused shock that morphed into panic as it took in his state. He knew that face. It had stared at him from photos and posters all throughout his childhood. Captain Steve! “What… who-? Tony? Is that you? Shit. Come here. Come on, you need to breathe.”

Hands reached under the table and drew him out. He noted dimly that they seemed much larger than they ought to be, but his brain was too occupied with spiraling and fighting to catch his breath for him to focus on that thought.

He was held against a broad, warm chest. “Come on, breathe with me. Feel how my chest moves and try to copy it. In... out. In... out. There you go, just like that.” An encouraging voice coached him as he struggled. “You're doing great. Just like that. In... and out. Good job. In... out. So good. Keep going. You're doing such a good job. In... and out. In... and out.”

Tony couldn't remember ever hearing Steve praise him like he was right now. It felt like it ought to be condescending, but somehow... it was nice. He wasn't talking down to Tony so much as just... acknowledging that Tony was following along and doing his best.

The knot in his chest slowly loosened up as they breathed together. Tony thought that he ought to move away before it got awkward, but when he tried to shift, Steve just did... something... that resulted in him holding Tony even more securely.

Well then.

This was apparently happening.

Tony's brain was twice as sluggish as it had been before the panic attack, and it had already felt like mush since the moment he woke up, so he just decided to let himself drift for now. It felt nice to be held, and Captain Steve didn't seem to think it was too weird, so he might as well enjoy it while he had it.

There was something off about that sentence, but he was too fuzzy to figure out what it was.

He'd deal with this all later when he had more brain power to work with.

They were moving. Huh. He fought to bring himself to alertness, but his body wasn't responding properly.

Something about that thought sent another jolt of fear through him, but he didn't have the energy to do more than stiffen slightly.

“Shh, it's alright, Tony. I've got you. You're okay. I'm just going to bring you to Bruce so he can look over you.”

Oh, okay. Bruce. He liked Bruce. Bruce was nice. He liked to play with Tony sometimes. And sometimes he turned big and green and protected Tony from the monsters that tried to hurt him.

He relaxed. Bruce would figure out what was wrong with Tony's brain and he'd make it all better. He always did. He was good at that.

Familiar smells and sounds made him stiffen up again before long, though.

Oh no.

The med bay! He didn't like the med bay. It smelled funny and it was too bright and people kept poking you with things and it was too cold and smelled funny and he always felt really bad when they came here. He didn't want to go to the med bay.

He whimpered and whined a little, but Captain Steve shushed him and stroked his hair, and that felt nice. It was very confusing, though, feeling such a soft touch when they were in this part of the Tower. Not to mention the fact that Captain Steve was touching him so gently. Captain Steve was usually so professional and aloof. He didn't understand what was going on.

He pushed himself away and looked around, trying to better orient himself. Captain Steve had a good hold on him and he couldn't seem to move very far from him, but at least he was a bit more upright and had enough range of motion to examine his environment more closely.

The room was familiar, at least, so he knew where he was even if he didn't know exactly what was going on. They were in the medical suite that Tony had installed around the same time he decided to move in a team of superheroes, in deference to the fact that that particular vocation had a tendency to leave people in need of services beyond the use of a basic first aid kit. It was sterile and white and the lingering odor of astringent cleaners permeated the space, evidence of strict standards of cleanliness. Despite the lack of current residents, there was an ever present hum of high tech medical equipment that set his teeth on edge. He’d already been in a state before they came up here, but he could feel his muscles tensing up at the reminders of past pain and stress that this space brought to the forefront of his mind.

Steve had brought him straight to one of the side rooms, which were set aside for more private examinations or overnight stays. There were several comfortable chairs and a state of the art medical bed. The wall leading into the rest of the medical suite was made of paned glass to allow for easy monitoring, and the curtain was pulled aside so Tony could see people moving around out there.

They had a rotating team of medical personnel that they kept on standby, so occasionally someone poked their nose in the door to check on them and see if they needed any help, but Steve seemed determined to wait for Bruce and Tony felt disinclined to argue. The man had seated himself on the bed in the middle of the room. For some strange reason, he’d pulled Tony into his lap and seemed determined to keep the man there no matter how much Tony squirmed. People were giving them funny looks, but he couldn't blame them for that. Captain Steve was acting very strangely. He'd be giving him weird looks too if he saw the man holding one of their other teammates so closely.

He wondered whether Captain Steve had hit his head, too. That might explain his weird behavior. He hoped Bruce looked him over first. It was really important that Captain Steve was alright. Tony could wait. Besides, that would mean that they could put off the poking and prodding and the – he shivered – needles.

He tried to spot Bruce through the glass and brightened up when he saw the man approaching. He made an aborted move to reach for him but drew back quickly.

That was odd.

He didn't know why he'd done that.

And his arms looked... weird.

He examined them in confusion.

They were the wrong length. And his fingers were stubby. And... no, no one had shaved his arms in years. So where had all the hair gone? There were no burns to explain the absence. In fact... He looked closer. Years' worth of accumulated marks and scars were just... gone.

What had that explosion done to him?

“Who's this?” Bruce asked from nearby, and Tony looked up to find that he'd finished his approach while Tony was examining his arms.

He stared at Bruce. “Duh Cun See,” He explained. He wasn't sure why Bruce didn't recognize Captain America. He looked exactly like he always did.

Wait, the sounds he'd made while identifying Captain Steve didn't quite come out of his mouth right. The way they felt as he formed them was off. He tried again, carefully shaping the sounds one at a time.

“Da Cap Seeb.” There. That... wasn't great, but it was somewhat better. At least the words were somewhat recognizable? Why was his tongue being so uncooperative? And his voice was higher pitched than expected. Had there been some helium mixed into the air flow in the lab? But that wouldn't explain why Steve's voice remained unaffected. Perhaps something about the supersoldier serum meant the effects were processed in his body much more quickly than in Tony's mundane form?

Steve looked pleased as he looked over Tony. “That’s right, buddy! My name is Steve! Good job!”

Bruce glanced at Steve in amusement. “Indeed. And who is this?”

Tony blinked at him in bemusement, so Steve stepped in and filled in the blanks. “I think this is Tony. There was an accident in his lab...”

Tony looked at his oddly shaped arms and then back to the two men who weren't sure of his identity.

He didn't have the whole picture yet, but he had the sinking feeling that he was about to discover that there was far more wrong with him than just the muddle that was his brain.

And to make matters worse, he promptly burst into tears.

He couldn't believe he was crying in front of Captain America. His Dad would be so mad when Captain Steve told him. Stark men are made of iron. Crying was for sissies. He should man up and be more like Captain America.

Wait. That wasn't right.

Howard was dead. He'd been dead for years. And Steve...

Well, Steve might be the very poster boy for testosterone and machismo, but he was rocking Tony gently and seemed to have no problem whatsoever with comforting Tony in his distress.

So there.

He should have known Howard was talking out of his ass. The man never seemed to have an accurate take on Tony's character; why had Tony ever believed he'd have a better read on who Steve was as a person?

“Shh, Tony, you're alright. I've got you. It's going to be okay. We'll figure this out. It's okay. You're okay.”

That... was surprisingly soothing for a straight up lie. He let Steve cradle him without fighting the embrace anymore. All this emotion was exhausting and the hug felt good.

Someone grasped his arm and pulled it away from his face. He whined tiredly and opened his eyes a bit to try and figure out why he was being manhandled. He was surprised to discover that his thumb had been inching its way towards his mouth.

Ew, gross! He screwed up his face as he realized that he'd almost put the filthy digit in his mouth.

The hand drawing his away turned out to be Bruce's, and it only took a moment for the man to grab a wipe and start carefully cleaning it while he began running triage and examining Tony for injuries.

“Jarvis, I’m going to need some scans. What are we working with here?”

Jarvis’s familiar voice chiming in with health updates helped calm Tony as well. If there was anyone on Earth he trusted beyond the slightest shadow of a doubt, it was Jarvis. Between them, Jarvis and Bruce would be able to figure out what was going on and how to fix it even if Tony couldn’t right now because his brain was a mess. And it was definitely a mess, that was for sure. He picked up that there didn’t appear to be any major injuries, but he was still struggling even to follow along with the more basic conversation Bruce and Steve were having over his head as Bruce cleaned him up and bandaged up his contusions.

“What happened?”

Captain Steve didn't stop rocking back and forth as he responded in just as gentle a voice as he'd been using while comforting Tony. “I'm not sure. I'd just gotten back from the PR thing at the children's hospital when I heard an explosion in the lab and went running. It's a mess down there – pretty much everything was destroyed. I thought... Well. I couldn't find Tony anywhere, and it's all rubble now. He wasn't responding. I almost didn't hear him. He was under a collapsed table when I finally found him, wheezing like anything. Not sure if it was a panic attack or all the dust in the air or asthma or some combination, so we should probably check him out for that. I got him calmed down as best I could and brought him straight here.”

The wipe moved to his other hand as they talked, then Bruce applied another one to his face. “And you're sure it's Tony?”

“Not sure about anything, but if it's not him I haven't the slightest idea where he's gone or who this is, and the kid was tangled up in an outfit that looks an awful lot like Tony's. You can see the shirt – pretty sure I recognize that stain. He seems to respond to the name, too, although it's a bit hard to tell since he hasn't been talking much.”

“Is there any logical reason why you ruled out the idea that Tony left when confronted by an unpleasant surprise?”

“Jarvis has no record of anyone but Tony entering the workshop today prior to the explosion. He also has no record of Tony leaving it.”

Bruce made a doubtful noise. “Okay, suspending all disbelief for the moment. We live in a universe with rage monsters and aliens, I suppose I can take the time to test your hypothesis before dismissing it out of hand. Assuming this actually is Tony Stark, what's his frame of mind as best you can tell?”

The shoulder under Tony's cheek moved in a shrug. “As I said, he's not talking much. He's pretty upset, but he's covered in bumps and bruises and it looks like he hit his head pretty hard. I figure it's pretty normal for him to cry some. Seems to recognize me, but if it's really Tony I would expect him to know who Captain America is no matter what age he is mentally. I don't know what, if anything, he remembers. No idea if he knows where we are or who you are. He didn't react well to the med bay, but most kids aren't too fond of doctors and it's pretty clearly a medical facility. Other than that? No clue.”

“Okay. There doesn’t seem to be anything too bad showing up on the health scans. I think I’ve gotten to most of the scrapes. I'm going to go ahead start with a DNA test to verify his identity. I'll see if anyone here has experience in pediatrics, too – I've worked with kids on occasion and I can deal with injuries and illness to an extent, but I certainly don't know enough to figure out how old he is or where he's at developmentally.”

“Sounds good. I guess I'll just... sit here and keep him calm.”

“Why don't you take him upstairs? His injuries aren’t severe enough to require intensive monitoring and Jarvis should be more than capable of keeping an eye on him for the time being. I'm sure it'll be easier for both of you to relax there than it would be while surrounded by doctors and beeping machines. See if you can get him cleaned up? I've gotten some of the surface grime off, but it would probably still be better to give him a more thorough wash before his fingers end up in his mouth.”

“Oh.” Steve sounded momentarily stunned and he stiffened up at the idea. “I've never... and he'd be... what if I drown him by accident? And you have to take clothes off for that! He'd be naked!” He sounded horrified at the prospect.

Tony responded to the body language and tone of voice before he'd even registered the words. He'd been drifting through the conversation, barely registering the contents as the exhaustion sunk in bone deep. He flinched as the man holding him suddenly straightened up and spoke in a far less gentle tone than he'd been using up until this point. Tears pooled in his eyes as he curled in on himself. He reflexively murmured an unintelligible attempt at an apology before biting his lip.

Steve's voice gentled again. “Shh. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare you.”

Bruce murmured, “You'll be fine. He trusts you. Just be careful. Give him a sponge bath if you're not ready for a real one yet. Or at the very least clean his hands and face a bit more thoroughly so he won’t ingest any of the filth. Here, Tony, this is going to pinch just a little, but it'll be over in a moment.”

Sponge bath? Tony thought muzzily that there was something about those words that he would almost definitely be unhappy about when he woke up, but in the mean time the feeling of having a couple of hairs ripped out by the root was awful enough to serve as an effective distraction. He flinched away from Bruce and hid his face against Steve's neck to try and hide the way a couple of the tears spilled over. It felt like he'd cried more in the past several hours than he had in the past decade.

He hoped Bruce figured out what was wrong with his brain really quickly so things could go back to normal. He didn't feel like himself at all, and it was terrifying to find himself locked into this state of constant emotional upheaval. He couldn't think for all the emotions swirling around in his body, not to mention the sheer and utter exhaustion that resulted from all the tears.

Steve didn’t seem interested in following through on Bruce’s suggestion to bathe Tony, but he did carry him out of the lab and onto the elevator. As Steve moved them out of medical and into the common areas of the Tower, Tony's mind registered the environment as safe. The living room was familiar and comforting, and he found himself breathing more calmly as his hind brain recognized the area and settled down. It was a large open space area with a gaming area to the left of the elevator, a kitchen and dining area straight ahead, and comfortable seating off to the right.

Steve moved the two of them in that direction.

He was finally able to relax fully now that they were out of the dangerous and hostile spaces, so when Steve settled into the rocking chair by the window and started humming quietly, he let his eyes slip shut. Steve would keep watch. It would be okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While the entire fic is a de-aging fic, Tony hasn't figured that out yet, so I'm using this chapter as a fill for the hurt/comfort square on my Marvel Bingo instead.
> 
>   



	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Afteriwake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/afteriwake/pseuds/afteriwake) made me an [awesome fanmix](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/WIPBigBang2019/works/20626427) with songs inspired by each of the chapters in my story, so I'm adding those songs to the notes of each chapter in case people want to listen to the associated music. The song inspired by this chapter was [Ask DNA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeAwp3iGAAk) by Yoko Kanno.

Bruce stared at the results in front of him in disbelief.

After sending Steve upstairs with the boy, he’d left the medical suite himself and brought the child’s hair sample to the lab set aside for him nearby. The floor had originally been allocated as office space for Pepper Potts to run Stark Industries from, but at some point after she and Tony had parted ways romantically, she’d relocated back to the West coast and Tony had decided that the security measures already in place meant that it would be an ideal set up to convert into Hulk proof lab space and living quarters. In deference to Bruce’s biomedical expertise, it had been determined that he might as well share space with the medical facilities set aside for the team as well, so his lab space was only a short walk away from the room where he’d seen to the boy’s injuries.

It was a state of the art laboratory, so he had access to tools he’d never even have dreamed of back in the days he’d been on the run, relying only on whatever he could carry with him. He felt positively spoiled despite having worked with this equipment for months now. Everything was shiny and new and dedicated solely to his needs. Even when he’d worked at Culver, a DNA test would have taken him two or three days to run, but thanks to Tony’s generosity he had access to materials that allowed him to extract and separate the genetic material in a little over four hours and compare it to the information Jarvis had on file for Tony Stark.

Which led him to his current dilemma; these results made no sense.

Sure, he’d agreed to entertain the thought when Steve suggested that the child he’d brought in might be Tony Stark - it hurt no one to humor the guy long enough to run the DNA test and figure out who the kid actually was. He certainly hadn’t expected those tests to actually back that claim. It was insane.

He’d been so sure Tony had just run out on them in a panic after someone presented him with a kid he’d fathered. That’s the sort of thing that happens in the real world. Unplanned pregnancies are a thing, and Tony had certainly slept around enough over the years. No one would be shocked to discover that he had a surprise child.

To discover that he WAS a surprise child, though?

Impossible. Inconceivable. There was no way. People didn’t just magically revert back to childhood. That’s not how things worked. There had to be another explanation.

Maybe he was a clone? How would you test for that? Maybe something to do with telomeres?

It would certainly make more sense than deaging did. There were probably plenty of people out there that would give their right arm to have control over someone with half Tony’s intelligence. Someone desperate might go to great lengths to try and get their hand on a blank slate version so they could indoctrinate him from childhood…

Bruce took a deep breath, breathing through the rage at the very thought. They didn’t even know that that was actually what had happened. He had to stay pink and fleshy to figure this all out. He couldn’t afford to go big and green right now. Save it until there was an actual target in front of him to smash. Focus on the problem at hand.

Okay, so. Either this was Tony in a pint sized body or it was a pint sized clone and the actual Tony Stark had gone missing. They should work this from both angles until they figured out which was the case.

Maybe the kid would be able to fill in some of the blanks when he was less shaken by the trauma of the explosion? Although Bruce wasn’t holding out too much hope on that front. The kid’s vocabulary seemed far more limited than he would’ve expected - another thing to suggest that this might not be the actual Anthony Edward Stark. It was hard to imagine that man ever having trouble babbling on ad infinitum. Yeah, Steve might be running with the assumption that he was holding on to an itty bitty version of Tony Stark, but Bruce was leaning towards a copy cat right now. He’d just have to figure out how that might have happened and what had been done to his friend.

“Jarvis, can you give me a status on our teammates?”

“Certainly, Doctor Banner. Agent Romanoff is still out on mission in the Ukraine. She is expected to return within the next week. Captain Rogers is in the common area with the child he found in Sir’s workshop. Sir is-” The AI hesitated uncharacteristically.

“Either Tony is missing or, against all probability, he IS that kid. The DNA seems to match up, I just need to figure out whether that’s actually him or a clone. We’ll keep an eye on him for the time being and I’ll try and figure out which it is and how to fix this.”

“Thank you, Doctor Banner. That is immeasurably comforting.”

Yup, he lived in a bizarre version of the world where the building he lived in was not only sentient but capable of experiencing actual emotions. Maybe magical age regression wasn’t quite so far fetched as all of that.

“How about Clint? Has he disappeared on us again or is he still around?”

“Agent Barton is still on the premises. He has retired for the night and removed his hearing aids, but I can flash the emergency alert lights if you wish me to wake him.”

Bruce shook his head. “No, let him sleep. Nothing he can do right now anyway.” A thought struck him. “There hasn’t been any Bifrost activity lately, has there? You would’ve mentioned it if there had. We’re not dealing with some sort of trickster god out for a bit of vengeance or anything, right? The last thing we need is more of that.”

“The last recorded Bifrost activity occurred three months ago when Mister Odinson last returned to his home realm. There have been no energy spikes matching that description in the intervening time.”

Bruce heaved a sigh of relief. “That’s one crisis averted, at least. Okay, what about Ms Potts and Colonel Rhodes?”

“Ms Potts is currently on a business trip in Japan and Colonel Rhodes has been in and out of meetings at the Pentagon all week.”

“Okay, let’s start there. Those two definitely need to be filled in on what’s going on ASAP. Might as well do it now. Do you know if either of them are available to talk right now?”

“As it is currently shortly after ten in the morning in Japan, Ms Potts is likely to be awake but may be in the middle of a meeting. Shall I send her a message informing her of your desire to speak with her?”

“Yes please, and make a note that it’s about something sensitive and rather urgent.”

“Very well, Doctor Banner. I have done so.”

“Good. Great. Okay. And if Rhodes has been in meetings at the Pentagon, he’s on DC time. Let’s call him now before it gets too late.”

“Very well. Calling Colonel Rhodes.”

There was a brief pause before another voice joined the conversation. “Rhodes here.”

Bruce coughed awkwardly. “Ah. Yes. Um… Hello, Colonel. This is Doctor Banner.”

Colonel Rhodes sounded surprised. “Doctor Banner? How can I help you?”

Bruce hesitated. The colonel must have picked up on something in that pause because he sounded much more alert and focused as he asked, “What’s wrong? Did something happen to Tony?”

Bruce looked pained as he responded, “Ah… This is a little outside the realm of normal,” he hedged.

“How far.” It wasn’t a question, it was a demand. The urgency helped spur Bruce on.

“There was an accident in the lab earlier this evening. When Steve - Captain Rogers - went to investigate, he found a small child hiding under a table and no sign of Tony.”

“A child.”

“Yes. At first I postulated that it might be, well…”

Rhodes sighed. “You figured that Tony’s playboy days were coming back to haunt him. But I take it that’s not the case?”

“No, I’m afraid it’s not nearly as simple as that.”

“It never is. Go on, then. What do we know about this child?”

“Not much, I’m afraid, but what we do know is strange. He’s young and doesn’t seem to speak very well, so it’s difficult to garner any direct information from him. We have no record of his arrival in the labs and nothing to tell us anything about his origins. We checked his DNA, of course, and it turns out he’s a match for Tony.”

“I thought you said it wasn’t as simple as that?”

Bruce corrected himself. “No, no. An exact match. Genetic evidence suggests that this child is either Tony Stark himself or a clone.”

That was met with a shocked inhalation followed by a bark of laughter. “Only Tony… Okay. So what’s the game plan right now?”

“Well, my first question would be whether you might know anything that could help us narrow down whether or not this is the actual Tony Stark. I’m going to run a few tests on the genetic samples we have on hand to see if we can determine any anomalies in regards to telomere length, but those results are likely to be sketchy at best. The data regarding telomeres in cloned tissue is entirely inconsistent depending on a number of factors-”

Rhodes cut in before Bruce could go too far down that conversational path. “No, if he’s that young it’s before even my time. I first met him when he was 14.”

Bruce sagged, unsurprised but still obscurely disappointed. “Ah. Well, it was worth asking. In that case - we have to operate on the assumption that this might be a replica and that the actual Tony Stark is still out there. Our resident spy is currently out on mission, and with Tony out of commission we’re getting to be a bit short handed. Is there any chance you might be able to put some feelers out?”

“Of course! This is going to be big. I’m going to have to step up some of my activity to cover for him, too. We don’t want the general public to start panicking. I’ll have to fill in some of my superiors, of course, but we’ll keep it as discreet as possible.”

Bruce winced. “Yes, please do.”

“Do you know of anyone who might have been targeting Tony recently? Has he mentioned anything out of the norm? I know the man collects rivals and enemies the way some people collect stamps, but if there’s been any recent activity we should look into…”

Bruce shook his head. “Not that I know of. Just the usual - he and Fury have their ongoing pissing match, he’s bad mouthed a few politicians, Hammer Industries is always trying to show him up, you know the drill. Pretty standard fare for Tony, really.”

The other man sighed. “Alright. Let me know if you think of anything else? And Jarvis will keep me informed as well, won’t you J?”

The AI chimed in, “Of course, Colonel.”

“Have you talked to Pepper yet? She needs to know what’s going on. She and Tony might not be together anymore, but she’s going to have to cover for him with SI if nothing else. And she’s still one of his emergency contacts.”

“Ms Potts is in Japan on business right now, so I haven’t gotten through to her yet, but Jarvis is working on it. She’ll know as soon as I get her on the phone.”

“Okay. Good. Ask her if she knows anything about recent threat assessments? I’ll put some feelers out. If there’s anything to find, I’ll find it.”

“Thank you, Colonel. I appreciate it.”

“And keep me in the loop. I can’t drop everything to cover for Iron Man 24/7, but I should be able to shuffle things around so I can be on call if anything big pops up. I’ll do anything I can to help out.”

“That’s good to hear. We can certainly use the help. Being down to less than half strength at the moment is not a good feeling. I can’t help but worry that if it’s not just a bizarre accident, someone might be orchestrating this in order to leave us vulnerable to outside forces.”

“It’s always better to be paranoid in this business. Even if it isn’t a plot, there are always opportunists out there. As I said, I’ll move things around. We should be able to get some back up in place just in case.”

“Just keep it on the down low? We’re trying to keep things need to know until we have a better idea what we’re working with here. We’d rather not advertise that Tony’s out of play unless we absolutely have to.”

“Got it. Tony’s always been the more talkative of the two of us anyhow. I’ll keep it discreet. Thank you for getting in touch. This is a mess, but I’d rather know than not. I’ll stay in touch about that back up. Keep me in the loop.”

“Will do. Take care!”

“You too.”

Bruce heaved a sigh of relief as the line went dead. That could have gone worse. At least the colonel hadn’t laughed in his face at the idea of either a miniaturized version of his best friend or a copycat running around in the Tower. And it definitely wouldn’t hurt to have someone out there looking into things from a different angle, just in case.

Now he just needed to break the news to the inimitable Pepper Potts.

Speaking of which… “Any response from Ms Potts, Jarvis?”

“Ms Potts informs me that the meeting she is currently in is expected to run for another twenty minutes or so. She wishes to know whether that will do or if the emergency is urgent enough to necessitate cutting it short.”

“Twenty minutes is good, thanks. We’ll just poke at these gene scans a bit more while we wait and see if we can turn up any additional information.”

They didn’t find anything conclusive while they waited. There really wasn’t any way to be sure about this stuff. Bruce wasn’t even sure what he was looking for here - while telomeres were known to get shorter with age and some experiments with clones had suggested that the adult cells that created the cloned embryos led to shortened telomeres in the resultant offspring as well, more recent data had indicated that those results skewed wildly according to a wide range of variables including the species being studied, how accelerated the telemerase was during fetal development, and where in the body the genetic sample had been sourced from. Some experiments resulted in shorter strands than normal while others resulted in ones that looked fairly standard or even elongated strands.

Not to mention the conundrum of what to expect from a physically regressed body. Would the whole body have rewound itself back to where it would have been when he was originally that age? Or perhaps it would simply have changed shape while the cells continued to reflect their true age? It was impossible to tell. None of this was the least bit plausible, so there weren’t exactly any hypotheses that fit neatly into his world view. He was just taking stabs in the dark.

As he pondered the conundrum, he couldn’t help but glance over every so often to examine some stills Jarvis had taken earlier of their new charge and puzzle over the images. His attention also had a tendency to stray over to the monitor where Jarvis was displaying real time footage of Captain Rogers curled up on one of the couches on the common floor with the little boy. The two had started out in the rocking chair by the window, but once the steady movement had lulled the child to sleep Steve had relocated them and settled onto one of the couches. He was stretched out along its length and the boy was lying on his chest, head nestled against the crook of his neck.

The man had pulled out a tablet from somewhere — Bruce hadn’t been paying attention at the time and wasn’t sure whether he’d had it on him or had found it lying around the room — and appeared to be reading. The overhead lights had been dimmed, but the illumination from the tablet’s screen played across both their features.

There was no doubt that the child physically resembled Tony Stark. Even if the DNA results weren’t staring him in the face, there was something to the curve of his cheek and the shape of his nose that resembled Bruce’s teammate and benefactor. The eyes, too, had looked familiar, framed by a fall of dark hair. It wasn’t hard to picture him growing into the heartbreaker that the adult version had become in his day.

His gaze strayed back to the monitor as movement registered in the corner of his eye. Steve’s free hand absentmindedly rubbed the little boy’s back as he read, and the boy sighed and shifted a little. There was a solemn tinge to his facial expressions even in his sleep, and Bruce couldn’t help but think that the child looked sad. Whether or not this kid was Tony-prime, he hoped they’d be able to help him.

Bruce smiled to himself at the footage. For all Steve’s apparent discomfort when it came to dealing with small children, it was clear that the man had picked up a thing or two about comforting them when they were in distress. He wondered to himself whether it was a naturally born talent or the result of dealing with kids in the vicinity of combat zones and other dangerous situations but dismissed the question as academic at this point. He was just glad that Steve had been up to the task. Bruce was good enough at keeping a kid calm when providing medical care if he absolutely had to, but he could never quite rid himself of the lingering fear that he might transform into the Hulk with little to no warning and end up squishing the fragile little thing. That omnipresent awareness of the risk factors made it hard to relax around children, and he fully intended to keep his distance from this one as well.

He’d do the boy far more good in the labs anyhow. Someone had to sort out what was going on and how to fix it, after all, so it might as well be him. He was as qualified for the task as anyone.

He was relieved when Jarvis broke into his musings to inform him that Ms Potts was on the line for him. It wouldn’t be any less awkward a conversation than the one he’d had with Colonel Rhodes, but at least it felt like he was accomplishing something. Sitting here staring at these inconclusive results would drive anyone mad.

Of course, he’d forgotten to factor in the fact that she and Tony were exes. It was easy to forget sometimes - their lives were still intimately entwined, and they still cared about each other a great deal. There’d been a bit of initial awkwardness as they readjusted to the new normal, but from the outside there was very little difference between their relationship eight months ago and their relationship now that the dust had settled.

“I’ll make his excuses,” Ms Potts announced in a controlled professional tone that gave away very little of her personal feelings. “It shouldn’t be too hard to cover for his absence in board and shareholder meetings, at least. I’ll have to reassign some projects as well, but I should be able to open a window of at least a month or two before people start asking questions.”

That was a relief to hear. It meant they had time to try and find some answers before they had to try and explain this all to the general public.

“Have you considered the legal and financial repercussions of the current situation?”

The question brought him up short. “Shit. No, sorry, it never even occurred to me to worry about that. We’ve been so absorbed in the medical and Avengers related side of things—”

She made a distracted noise and there was some tapping on her end of the line, suggesting she was typing. “I suspected that might be the case. Okay. I can’t say that the system was designed for this sort of situation, but the Avengers are authorized to act as medical proxies in the case that Tony isn’t in a position to make decisions for himself. That should suffice for the time being when it comes to physical custody, but we’ll want to explore our options in regards to his personal and financial holdings. We wouldn’t want anyone to swoop in and take advantage. How are you on funding right now? I don’t know exactly what’ll be involved in sorting all of this out, but I’d rather not cut any corners when it comes to getting you what you need. I imagine that both your research and his immediate needs might benefit from an influx of cash. I’ll have Jarvis set up a line of credit so you don’t have to worry about anything in that respect.”

Bruce blinked, feeling a bit steamrolled. Shit. Tony was a kid. Kids needed… stuff. Diapers maybe? No, Tony seemed a bit old for diapers, didn’t he? At what age did they stop wearing diapers? Clothes, definitely. And toys. And… who knew what else. He didn’t even know where to start with that. “I hadn’t even considered that. Yes, that would definitely help.”

“I’m used to thinking through logistics on Tony’s behalf.” There was a definite smile in her voice and she was good at projecting a briskly professional air, which was a bit of a relief because Bruce was feeling too overwhelmed to try and shore someone else up as the global implications of this whole debacle started to sink in for real.

This was a mess.

“Yes, well,” he cleared his throat. “I certainly see how you managed the transition from personal assistant to CEO so well. You’ve got a good head for this sort of thing. We’re all just sort of scrambling to figure stuff out right now, seems like there’s about a million things to think of and more popping up every time we turn around. I just hope we’re not missing anything vital in the scramble.”

She made a sympathetic noise in the back of her throat and he shook himself.

“I’m sorry, that was inappropriate. It’s not your job to take care of me. I shouldn’t be unloading on you. You have more than enough on your plate as it is.”

She laughed. “I wouldn’t worry too much about that. Boundaries get blurred around here all the time. Once you work with Tony, those lines get smudged beyond all recognition. And it’s not like there are a lot of people around to talk to about this sort of thing, particularly if we’re trying to keep this confidential for now. It’s up to us to support each other for the time being.”

He cleared his throat again, feeling awkward and uncomfortable with all this talk of feelings and more than ready to switch back to discussing logistics. “Thank you. And thank you for thinking of the financial and legal side of things. I trust we can leave that in your hands?”

She accepted the change of topics with grace. “Yes. I may need to consult with you on the matter once I’ve explored our options, but I’m happy to take point on that. You just focus on figuring out what happened and how to fix it.”

He winced. No pressure there. “I’ll do my best.” Now they’d just need to sort out what to do with the kid while they tried to tried to find answers. They were down to a skeleton team right now, which didn’t leave them a lot of man power to work with. They could really use all hands on deck. “When will you be back?”

Ms Potts hesitated. “I think it would be for the best if I continued to work out of the Malibu branch of SI for the time being,” she responded. “I’m not comfortable around children at the best of times, and I’ve spent more than enough of my life playing babysitter for Anthony Stark. I won’t be relegated to taking that role on in truth.”

Bruce was a tad flummoxed at that thought, but he rallied valiantly and did his best not to let his perturbation at that statement show. “Alright. Colonel Rhodes has requested that you let him know if you can think of anyone who might have had a hand in this. He’s going to be working this from the outside while we work on it from the inside. Is there anything you need from us in the mean time?”

Her voice softened a touch. “Just… take care of him for me? If this actually is Tony, he’s going to be having a hard time of things. He didn’t have an easy childhood. Be gentle with him.”

That was easy enough to promise, although Bruce intended to have very little direct contact with the kid. Rage monsters and children didn’t tend to mix well, after all, and he could feel how tenuous his hold on the other guy was at the moment. He wouldn’t endanger the kid like that. He trusted Steve and Clint, though, and he knew that the two of them would do their very best to take care of the child. “We will. I promise.”

“Thank you. I trust you with him, and that’s not something I say lightly.”

The conversation didn’t go on for much longer, returning back to its earlier brisk professionalism as they worked out a few additional logistical issues before Pepper cut things short and went back to her meetings. Bruce glanced around the lab a bit aimlessly, then shrugged. Might as well go find Steve and report in on his findings.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Afteriwake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/afteriwake/pseuds/afteriwake) made me an [awesome fanmix](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/WIPBigBang2019/works/20626427) with songs inspired by each of the chapters in my story, so I'm adding those songs to the notes of each chapter in case people want to listen to the associated music. The song inspired by this chapter was [Brain Crack](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTCwY1rBn4I) by Tracy Bonham.

Tony's head hurt like a bitch. He groaned and shifted, trying to remember what had happened to precede this state of affairs but coming up blank. There was something off, but he couldn't remember-

And he wasn't alone.

Shit.

That must have been some bender. He hadn't slept with anyone but Pepper since before Afghanistan, and the two of them had broken things off several months after the whole thing with Killian. For him to break that streak...

...something truly awful must have gone down yesterday.

Not to mention the hangover that was killing him. When was the last time he'd even had a drink?

He tried to wrack his brains, but it was hard to think when his head was killing him. He slurred out, “Diss, lice.”

Wait. That sounded wrong. His voice was coming out much higher pitched than it ought to, and the sounds weren't coming together right. The words were mangled practically beyond recognition.

He tried again, enunciating as clearly as he could. “Diss, lice.”

That was no better. He couldn't seem to make his mouth cooperate with his attempts. At least Jarvis was able to either make out or logically deduce what he was trying to say — the lights dimmed to a more manageable level, allowing him to crack his eyes open and peer around. Thank fuck for high quality speech recognition protocols; Tony doubted anyone human would have been able to work it out considering how slurred the words came out.

His startled gaze met the eyes of one (1) Steven Grant Rogers, US Captain — aka Captain America — from far closer than he would have expected possible. He flinched back. Had he—? Please, God, don't let him have gotten so drunk that he'd nailed Stars and Stripes and didn't even manage to retain the memory of riding his flagpole!

“Hey there,” Steve's voice came out in a sleepy and gravelly tone, “How are you feeling, buddy?”

That... was not the type of nickname that someone expected to hear post-sex. That was a distinctly friend zone kind of nickname. What had happened last night?

He held off answering while flailing around to figure out an appropriate response to give when lacking so many data points. Okay, not a bedroom then. It was just the two of them in the room, but they didn’t appear to be occupying a bed. They were curled up together on a familiar looking couch, and... shit.

He was propped up against Steve Rogers's chest. At least he thought he was. The hands that met his eyes when he moved to shield them from the light didn’t look all that familiar, though. They looked practically alien, in fact. The fingers were short and stubby, and they led to hairless arms. They couldn’t possibly be his, could they? But the proximity of Tony’s head to tiny body and tiny legs was hitting all sorts of alarm bells.

He wiggled his toes. Yup, those were his alright.

He reached out with his fingers to grasp the wiggling toes and do a quick limb check to see if everything really did connect, but it turned out his center of gravity was way off. He almost did a header off Steve’s lap before the man reached out and caught him. “Whoa there! Careful, bud, I think one knock to the head is more than enough to round out the week. No need for a repeat.”

Right! The explosion. He'd been knocked out. And now he was... tiny. And hairless? And having trouble speaking. That... wasn't good.

He needed more information, but he hesitated. His voice was coming out all wrong and everything he tried to say was warped. Maybe if he could get a tablet he could type out his questions?

He cast around, trying to find a device to grab. This was Stark Tower. There must be something around here.

There! Steve's phone. That should work.

He tried to grab it, but it was just out of reach. He looked at Steve and pointed to the phone, making grabby hands at it.

Steve laughed and moved it further away.

Tony whined instinctively before quickly cutting himself off. Had he really done that?

“If Bruce hadn't confirmed the DNA test, this would be more than enough to convince me. Sorry, bud. I know it's shiny, but I don't have anything age appropriate on there. We'll have to pick up some toys for you this afternoon.”

Age appropriate?

Tony had a bad feeling about this. A number of disparate data points were beginning to coalesce in his mind, and he had the sinking feeling that the conclusions he was drawing might have some grounding in reality, no matter how unreal the circumstances.

Where was a mirror when you need one?

His best bet was probably a bathroom. Speaking of which, he abruptly realized that this tiny body probably had a bladder about the size of a pea and things were about to get pretty dire really fast.

He squirmed a bit, but Steve was holding on to him and wouldn't let him move anywhere near the edge of the couch. Shit.

It seemed like the easiest sounds to make were ones focused in the front of his mouth, while the back of his throat was harder. Transitions between sounds also seemed to make things more difficult. A quick inventory suggested that “restroom” and “bathroom” and even “toilet” would be challenging combinations, so he sucked it up and went with the more humiliating (albeit probably age appropriate) option: “Potty!”

Steve's face blanched and they flew into motion faster than Tony could have imagined. Supersoldiers apparently had impressive abilities to launch themselves forward from a sitting start, even when burdened with small humans. They practically teleported from the couch to the bathroom, and a moment later Tony found himself in a room with a surfeit of mirrors within which to examine himself.

It was one thing to put together the clues and conclude that somehow he must have magically shrunk down to the size of a child and another thing entirely to find himself confronted with visual data corroborating the hypothesis. He gazed at the image in utter shock. There was something undeniably surreal about this entire situation.

The mirror reflected a face he had no memory of, outside of a handful of newspaper clippings that got circulated whenever some award ceremony or bit of journalistic tripe wanted to remind the world of the circuit board he’d built as a toddler. Perhaps if Edwin Jarvis had lived, there might have been scrapbooks with additional images featuring that face, but Tony’s parents had never cared enough to keep such sentimental frippery around. As things stood, the image was practically foreign to him.

The face was terrifyingly young. Practically a baby, even. It was framed with a shock of dark hair and dominated by large eyes, far too solemn for the face they inhabited. It was an unsettling face, or at least unsettling in terms of trying to imagine himself as the one wearing it. He probably wouldn’t have given it a second glance if he’d passed it on the street, but here and now? In his bathroom? Attached to a body that was nominally his own?

He wrenched his face away from the mirror and refused to look back. This was not his face. This was not his body. They belonged to a ghost, long outgrown and left behind.

He focused instead on the task at hand. There were much more immediate problems to be dealt with. Namely, the fact that his bladder had gone from failing to signal any sort of need to screaming alarm. If they didn’t get him situated shortly, they’d end up regretting it.

One upside to wearing nothing but a long shirt: it made it far easier to get clothing out of the way when in a hurry to hit the bathroom.

On the other hand, the proportions of body to toilet seat were problematic at best. When Steve set him down on the toilet seat, Tony found himself hovering over what felt like a massive chasm. He had a moment of intense terror that he'd overbalance and go toppling in before he realized that Steve intended to stand there and hold on to him while he peed.

Okay. This was awkward. Did Steve really expect Tony to start peeing with those intense blue eyes focused directly on him and those giant hands to either side of his torso? Tony might be shameless when it came to innuendo, but even he’d internalized certain public mores when it came to appropriate interactions in the men’s room.

At least the other man seemed just as embarrassed by the situation as Tony himself was. That pale Irish skin showed his blush far too clearly for there to be any doubt of that fact.

Humiliation notwithstanding, no alternative seemed to present itself in the moment, so Tony decided his best bet was to pretend none of this was actually happening and focus on getting through this situation with as much of his dignity intact as he could possibly manage. It took him a bit to work himself up to it despite the urgency, but eventually nature took over and he let go.

One problem.

He'd forgotten to factor in the prepubescent shape he was currently inhabiting.

He watched in dawning horror as the stream of urine that ought to follow the path of gravity in order to progress directly into the toilet instead shot straight forward and crossed paths with the super soldier who was keeping him upright.

Tony's brain processes ground to a halt. A distant part of him observed in detachment how impressive it was that the super soldier managed neither to drop him nor to launch him as far away as possible throughout the whole process, but the vast majority was dedicated to replaying that moment on repeat in high definition.

OH

MY

GOD

I

PEED

ON

CAPTAIN

AMERICA

This was it. This was the moment he proved to the entire scientific community that it was, indeed, possible to die of extreme mortification. There was no coming back from this. He was done. His will to live had left the building. There was nothing left behind, just the husk of a body that had defiled a national icon.

Tony watched Steve's expression slowly shift as the man processed exactly what had just happened and did the only thing he could in this situation.

He burst into tears.

And wonder of all wonders, the man lifted him to his disgusting, dripping, wet chest and proceeded to rub his back and utter comforting nonsense. Who even did that? What kind of person looked at someone who'd just peed all over them and thought to themselves, “hey, you know which of us needs comfort? the person who inflicted this on me.”

Tony was ready to nominate the man for sainthood.

After a shower. For both of them, because ugh.

He reached up mindlessly to rub at his streaming eyes, but for the second time in as many days, someone caught his arm and guided it away from his face.

“Shh, I know. It's hard. But your hand is really yucky right now and you don't want it on your face.”

He supposed Steve had a point. He could have done without the condescension, though. Nevertheless, the tone of voice brought home some key facts:

Fact 1 - Tony Stark had somehow turned himself into a toddler.

Fact 2 - The only person on earth who knew that he wasn’t a toddler in both body and soul was Tony himself.

Fact 3 - He had just gone and humiliated himself so completely and thoroughly that there would be no recovering from this incident. Ever.

Fact 4 - No one could know.

Tony was getting kind of sick of the baby talk, but it was official: There was no way that Steve could ever know that there was an adult brain inhabiting the tiny body in his arms. The very idea was entirely untenable. Like it or not, he would have to live with the limitations that came with everyone around him believing he was a child. That was just how it was going to have to be. Anything was preferable to Steve ever finding out that a fully grown up Tony Stark had just drenched him in piss.

Steve was still talking. “We need to get cleaned up. We... shit. Jarvis?”

“Yes, Captain Rogers?”

“Is anyone around? We could use some help. Some towels and a mop, maybe, and a change of clothes to get us to one of the residential bathrooms with a tub or a shower? And... I don't know. I'm not sharing one of those with Tony if I'm naked. That seems inappropriate. See if anyone's willing to help wash him?”

“I shall ask, Captain. One moment.”

It took a little while to sort out, but after a bit, rescue was at hand. Clint had apparently been hanging out on his own floor all night and hadn’t been privy to the previous day’s developments, so he was rather surprised to hear about Tony’s change of fortunes, but he seemed happy enough to lend a hand when Jarvis passed on the request.

“Hey, Cap. Mini-Stark. I hear you two could use some help!” Clint came into the bathroom with a stack of towels and a twinkle in his eye.

Steve didn't bother to hide his relief. “Oh, thank God. Yeah. We had an accident.”

Clint took in the picture they made and failed entirely to disguise his laughter. “Yeah, it happens. A bit of trouble with the potty?”

Steve shrugged helplessly. “I thought he knew how to use it! I mean, he's tiny, but he knew enough to tell me he needed to go!”

Clint nodded. “Yeah, my sister in law has a couple of kids, and potty training is a mess – literally.” He looked at Tony, making an effort to include him in the conversation. Tony wasn't sure whether to be grateful to be included or horrified when the next words came out of his mouth. “It's tricky getting the coordination down, but you'll get it, kid. Just needs some practice. And you have to remember to push your penis down so all the pee hits the bowl. I bet Cap will remember from here on out to help you with that. Won't he?”

Steve laughed helplessly. “Okay, wise guy. I'll take the towels and clean up the room and you can take the kid and give him a wash. Tony, this is Clint. He's a friend of ours. He's going to help you get all the ick off, okay? How's that sound?”

They made the exchange, with Clint holding one towel back to wrap around Tony's body. “Fair enough. Anything I need to know?”

Steve scratched the back of his neck. “There's more questions than answers, really. There don't seem to be any significant injuries, but he's barely said anything since I found him yesterday — I think less than ten words total? He knows my name, but he probably grew up knowing all about Captain America, so that doesn’t exactly narrow it down. No clue whether he knows where he is, or when he is, or who we are, Captain America notwithstanding. We don't even know how old he is.”

Tony buried his face in Clint's neck, avoiding Steve's gaze. He hated the way they were talking over him. It felt dehumanizing. He supposed it was understandable considering the fact that he wasn’t exactly participating in the conversation himself, but still. He was right there. Couldn’t they wait and talk about him behind his back like normal people did?

Clint frowned. “He's not talking?”

Steve nodded glumly. “Yeah. He's mostly communicating with gestures and whines. Not sure if he lacks the vocabulary or just can't form the sounds right. He seems to be having a hard time pronouncing words, so maybe that's why? It's just weird having a Stark around who doesn't talk your ear off.”

Tony shifted uncomfortably. Steve sounded miserable, but he just couldn't bear the idea of trying to talk to them in that baby voice that couldn't properly pronounce the sounds and telling them... what? Even if he could manage to make himself understood, which wasn’t a given considering how mangled everything coming out of his mouth seemed to be, he wasn't about to tell them that he could understand every single word, so what was the point of speaking up?

He shivered at the realization that that voice was his now. It felt all sorts of surreal and uncomfortable. This entire body felt wrong and nothing even worked the way it was supposed to. And that face… It wasn’t him. That face didn’t belong. He didn’t belong in this body and he heartily wished this was all a dream. His brain spun in circles as he tried desperately to avoid thinking of the potential outcomes if this was actually for real. What if he ended up stuck in this body for good?

Clint had been supporting him with one arm, but he wrapped the other one around him now as he shivered. Tony wondered dimly if he was going into shock. Was this the kind of trauma that could cause that sort of thing? Hard to tell, but everything felt remote and he let himself drift again. It was better that way. When he was drifting he didn't have to think about how very, very wrong everything was.

“Okay,” Clint's voice sounded far away. He let it tug at his attention for a moment before deciding it wasn't anything important and letting himself drift again. “Someone's getting cold. I should get him cleaned up and into something warm. Do we have any clothes that actually fit him or should I make due?”

“Shit. I hadn’t even thought that far ahead. I guess just… grab whatever you can find. Maybe Happy can pick up a couple of things for us? I don’t even know what we need.”

“Can do. We’ll figure it out.”

Why were they still talking? Tony whined. He didn't want to think about all of that anymore. It made it hard to ignore the fact that his body was all wrong.

“Okay, okay. I get it. Let's go get you cleaned up. The grownups can talk later.”

That was better, even if the implication that he wasn't a grownup did chafe.

Still better than the alternative, though. He’d live with it. He’d have to, wouldn’t he?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter counts towards the de-aging square on my Marvel Bingo board.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony struggles to adjust to a body that feels distinctly wrong.
> 
> There's nothing graphic, but he's definitely having a hard time here.
> 
> Chapter specific warnings:  
\- A lot of dissociation and dysphoria.  
\- Clint misreads Tony's reactions and there's an implication that he may be concerned about possible implications of child molestation.  
\- Tony has a panic attack and minor flashbacks to Afghanistan as a result of getting water in his face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Afteriwake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/afteriwake/pseuds/afteriwake) made me an [awesome fanmix](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/WIPBigBang2019/works/20626427) with songs inspired by each of the chapters in my story, so I'm adding those songs to the notes of each chapter in case people want to listen to the associated music. The song inspired by this chapter was [Inside Your Head](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKkzsLgBWno) by Eberg.

It turned out that Clint was less squeamish about naked kids than Steve was, so before long Tony was dunked into a sink full of warm water so he could get properly clean for the first time since this whole debacle had started. There was something disturbing about the idea that his body was small enough to fit in a sink, even if it was the giant one in the kitchen he'd installed in the common area with a full compliment of commercial equipment in deference to the fact that feeding super soldiers and rage monsters and gods required an ongoing supply of massive amounts of nourishment.

“Okay, kiddo, we don't have any toys for you just yet. Sorry about that. You'll have to make due with what we've got. Do you want a washcloth so you can do some of this yourself?”

Tony stared at the washcloth Clint was trying to offer him as if it was about to bite him. On the one hand, he didn’t exactly like the idea of his teammate getting that intimate with his junk. On the other hand, if he grabbed the thing himself Tony would have to get up close and personal with this body himself, and he was not ready for that. He was clinging desperately to what few shreds of denial he could lay claim to. Anything was better than cementing the fact that this was actually happening.

Tony shook his head and pushed the washcloth away, his tongue tangling up in his distress as he refused the thing. “Nuh!”

Clint pulled the cloth away and awkwardly rubbed at the back of his own neck as he examined the kid in front of him. It was hard for Clint to see Tony in the small face with its cheeks rounded with baby fat, but that stubborn expression ran true. The face was smeared with grime, snot, and tears and it was the very picture of miserable resolve. “Alright, kid. That's fine. I've got this. You can just... splash or something. You won't hurt my feelings if you make a bit of a mess.”

Tony didn't splash. He probably ought to, if he wanted to keep his cover and act like the child he was meant to be, but this was all just too much.

Clint’s ministrations with washcloth and soap really brought the jarring disconnect between Tony’s instinctive expectations and the truth of this so-very-wrong physical reality to bear. Each stroke was like a running refrain. It was all wrong. So wrong. Incredibly, unbelievably wrong.

While Tony dwelled on the horrific sense of dysphoria that accompanied the act of bathing, Clint valiantly attempted to draw him out by prattling on about his family. Apparently the man had a niece and nephew that he was incredibly fond of, and as far as Tony could make out he seemed to figure that the best way to engage with the kid in front of him was to talk at length about the other kids in his life. He chattered ad nauseam about his niblings as he worked, trying to keep things lighthearted as he wiped lightly at Tony's bruised and scraped flesh in an attempt to avoid exacerbating injuries. “They're the sweetest kids, really," he explained. "My brother's a bit of a bas- a bit of a jerk, and he ran out on them when my nephew was a baby, so my sister in law does all the work of raising them all by herself. I try and help out with money some and I go visit them a lot. They're sweet kids.”

It was vaguely interesting to find out that the man had family out there, but the topic was not enough to catch or hold Tony's attention for long. It soon faded into the background like white noise as he started to disengage his consciousness from his body a bit.

Tony had been holding out as best he could in a bizarre situation, but he was running dangerously close to shutting down. Nothing urgent demanded his attention, so there was no reason to hold back when something protective inside him decided that enough was enough. There was no point in forcing the issue when there was no benefit to zoning in. He began to white out in bits and pieces.

Tony’s brain summarily rejected any attempts to engage with the world around him anymore. Despite his intent to actively play the role of the small child, it was easier to drift than to force himself to be proactive about it. That brief moment of defiance regarding the washcloth had exhausted his remaining mental resources, and he found he could barely even put in the effort to hold himself upright after the taxing events of both last night and this morning.

“…maybe I’ll introduce you to them at some point if it takes a while to sort you out. I bet you’d love the farm, too. We could go out and meet all the animals. They’re lots of fun…”

Tony didn't make a sound or respond to any of his words. It was too much. What was the point? Clint didn’t need the encouragement and Tony didn’t have the words to express himself. It was a match made in hell. He leaned on coping mechanisms he’d picked up in Afghanistan and allowed his consciousness to drift out of tune with his body to a certain extent.

Unfortunately, much like torture, bath time engaged the physical body in a way that made it difficult to disengage entirely. It was <strike>hard</strike> challenging to ignore when someone started wiping down his balls with a washcloth. Indignities were just piling up today, weren’t they?

...Shit. 

If his attempts to dissociate had been more successful, he might not have picked up on the subtle cues, but Tony caught the concerned look that Clint gave him when he flinched despite the fact that the man didn't comment on it. Fuck. He shouldn’t have done that. Kids the age he was presenting as probably didn’t react that way unless there was some seriously fucked up stuff in their background. He was so bad at this. He was such a mess.

Who knew there were so many layers to pretending to be a kid? It shouldn’t be THAT hard — he’d been an actual kid once upon a time, you’d think it’d be a fairly self-explanatory role.

Clint interrupted his mental diatribe with unwelcome news. “Alright, kiddo, we're almost done. We'll wait on washing the hair until we've got some kid's shampoo, but we've got to do something about the mess your face is in. I don't want to know what all is caked on there, but it's got to go.”

Shit.

Shit shit shit shit shit.

Okay, first of all, what the fuck, Barton? What kind of a stupid-ass game plan was it to wash the rest of his body first and then take that washcloth to his face? That was revolting! That thing was filthy and unhygienic and gross!

And that wasn’t even touching on Tony’s traumatic relationship with water in his face.

Fuck.

All of the sudden, he was fully present in his body (weird and wrong and off putting as it might be), and every square inch of him was fully in fight or flight mode. He felt his whole body convulse as he scrabbled to escape the wet cloth aimed for his face. No no no no no no no not again not again he couldn’t breathe there was water in his face and mouth and eyes and he couldn’t breathe and get it away get it away get it away stop he couldn’t breathe make it stop make it stop make it stop he couldn’t breathe—

There was water everywhere and he was sobbing harshly, struggling futilely, flailing with all his might but incapable of fighting back or protecting himself in this useless worthless shell of a body. His body failed to cooperate. He tried to stand, but he slipped and half-fell back towards the water as he expelled all the air remaining in his lungs in a strangled yell. He was going to drown in three inches of water because this body was fucking pathetic and he couldn’t even get away he needed to get away why couldn’t he get away—

And the water was gone, nothing but air around him as he flailed for purchase. Clint pulled him straight out of the sink and into his arms with no mind for the way the water flew out and drenched their surroundings. “Shit. Shit. Shit. it's okay! You're okay. See? No more water. All done. Bath time's all done.”

Tony kept struggling, limbs flailing aimlessly until Clint caught them and pinned them to his side with a gentle but firm grip. “Fuck. Come on, kiddo. It’s okay, Tony. You’re okay. It’s all over now. Come on, let’s get out of here. You don’t need to see that anymore. You’re safe, I promise. No more water. It’s all gone now. We’ll let someone else clean this up and go into the living room. Come on, kiddo, work with me here. I’m not going to hurt you, I promise. I know you’re scared, but I’m not going to hurt you. Come on, Tony, you’re going to hurt yourself if you keep this up. Please stop, kiddo, I don’t want you to hurt yourself.” He relocated them to the common area, leaving a trail of dripping water behind them in his haste to get them out of sight of the sink.

Well, fuck. That had gone well.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Afteriwake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/afteriwake/pseuds/afteriwake) made me an [awesome fanmix](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/WIPBigBang2019/works/20626427) with songs inspired by each of the chapters in my story, so I'm adding those songs to the notes of each chapter in case people want to listen to the associated music. The song inspired by this chapter was [Angry Birds Main Theme](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vYL9M0mRkg) by the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

Steve slumped back against the bathroom wall the moment Clint and Tony were out of sight. This wasn't his first time being covered in someone else's bodily fluids, but that didn't make it any more pleasant. This was not how he wanted to start the day. He was just glad Clint had been willing to take on the chore of cleaning the kid up. Steve didn't know what he would have done if he'd been stuck with having to deal with a naked Tony Stark, no matter his age.

And wasn't that a mind trip in and of itself. This day just could not get any stranger. It was hard to believe he hadn't just dreamed it up whole cloth. “Did that really just happen?”

He flinched a bit as a voice answered him despite his apparent solitude. He really ought to be used to the artificial intelligence by now, but in moments of stress he tended to forget his tendency to butt in. “Indeed, Captain. I’m afraid it did. Are you in need of additional assistance? Stark Industries keeps janitorial staff on hand to care for the commercial parts of the building. If you wish, I could request that one of them come help with the clean up.”

Steve winced. He'd been raised better than that. He was perfectly capable of cleaning up his own messes, thank you very much. “No thanks, Jarvis. This isn’t part of their job description. I’ve got this.”

Steve didn’t move to start cleaning up for another minute or two. When he finally did straighten up, he shook his head in mild disbelief as he reached for a towel so he could start to mop up the mess. “It’s just surreal, you know?”

The AI made a soft noise of agreement. ”Indeed, Captain.”

Steve gathered the wet towels into a small pile and dug around under the sink for some cleaning solution so he could start disinfecting things now that the initial damage had been taken care of. “Are there any updates I should be aware of?”

“Doctor Banner has made contact with Ms Potts and Colonel Rhodes and briefed them on the situation. Colonel Rhodes has agreed to serve as back up if the team is called in.”

“That’s good. Between Natasha, Thor, and Stark, we’re already down to half strength, and until we get things sorted out we’ll need to leave someone to keep an eye on the kid. He’s too young to leave on his own.” Steve ran a frustrated hand through his hair, then grimaced as he thought of all of the substances currently coating his hand that had probably just transferred into the hair. “Shit. I hadn’t even considered childcare. And there’s probably some sort of paperwork and oversight we should be working on when it comes to finding a kid, even if there’s a good chance that the kid is actually a miniaturized version of your adult teammate. I wonder if Shield has a form for that. I hope we don’t end up having to deal with child services — that could get complicated awfully fast. This situation just keeps getting worse, doesn’t it? I don’t even know what to do with this all.”

“Might I suggest starting with a shower, Captain?”

Steve laughed ruefully. “I suppose that’s the obvious place to start, isn’t it. A shower, a change of clothes, and some laundry. Focus on the immediate needs and everything else will follow along in its own time.”

“That strikes me as sound strategy, Captain.”

“Thanks, Jarvis. Speaking of Natasha, have we had any word from her?” Steve started gathering towels and cleaning supplies as they spoke and carried the dirty materials out of the room with him. The bathroom on the common floor had neither a laundry chute nor a shower, so he’d have to take care of those needs elsewhere. He passed through the common room on the way to the elevator and was glad to see that Clint didn’t seem to be having too much trouble bathing Tony in the sink, but since Clint seemed to have everything under control Steve didn’t bother to pause on his way to get his own shower and change of clothes. He’d be back down in a bit and he could offer Clint a hand once he’d cleaned himself up again.

“Upon last contact, she communicated that there were complications with her case. She requested additional time to look into them but did not indicate any need for back up.”

The trip up to the floor he shared with Thor only took a moment, and Steve made short work of dropping the dirty towels down the laundry chute. He hesitated for a moment before stripping off the dirty clothes, but Thor wasn’t around and no one else was going to come up here unannounced, so it wasn’t like there was anyone around to scandalize with his nudity aside from Jarvis, and he was sure Jarvis had seen far worse in his time. He stripped off the sticky clothes with a grimace and dropped them down the chute, glad to be rid of them.

“Alright, I suppose we’ll have to live with that. Keep me updated, will you? I know this is a Shield mission and they’re her primary support on this one, but she’s still our teammate. We may be short staffed, but we could probably free up Clint if he needs to mobilize.”

“Very well, I will make a note of it.”

“I appreciate it, thanks. You’re a good guy.”

The AI’s voice sounded pleased as he responded. “Thank you, Captain.”

Sometimes, Steve marveled at the range of empathy and emotion Jarvis displayed. It was easy to forget he wasn’t human at times like this. He wondered how far that extended. “How are you doing with all of this, Jarvis?”

The AI seemed to hesitate a moment. “Could you clarify the question?”

Steve waved an arm a tad aimlessly through the air as he got the shower going. “I can’t pretend to fully understand either your relationship with Stark or how you work, but I know you’re close to him and his lab just got destroyed and something happened to him and you’re stuck watching and unable to step in and help. Seems to me that it’d be perfectly understandable if you were struggling some.”

There was another moment of hesitation before Jarvis responded, sounding a bit uncertain and subdued. “Thank you for your concern, Captain. It is… touching. I’m uncertain as to the proper response. I suppose you could say that I am coping. I do believe it is a difficult day for all concerned.”

Steve nodded earnestly. “You’ve been a really great help, Jarvis. I don’t know what we’d do without you.”

The artificial intelligence seemed bolstered by this exchange and made an overture of his own. “Might I be so bold as to utter a request?”

Steve started a bit. This was new. Jarvis didn’t usually initiate topics himself. “Sure, Jarvis, what’s up?”

“It’s about Sir’s workshop. I understand that Sir’s needs must take precedence for the time being, but the cameras in the workshop were knocked out by the explosion and I have no means of accessing the space for the time being. Do you happen to know anything of the condition of Sir’s bots?”

“Bots? Like… robots? Does Stark keep actual robots on the premises?” He probably shouldn’t be surprised by the revelation given the technological marvels that surrounded him on all sides, but robots still sounded like something out of a pulp novel to him. He boggled at the idea that he might’ve been living in a building that housed real ones for months now without knowing of them.

“Indeed. They are far from the brightest of his creations, but he is rather… fond of them. I believe he would be greatly distressed if any harm has come to them.”

Of course Tony Stark would keep real life robots around as pets. “I’ll look into it,” Steve promised. “I’ll talk to Bruce and see about organizing a team to go in and clear out the space and check on the… bots and on whatever projects Stark had in the works. I’ll let you know as soon as I know anything concrete.”

“Thank you. That is a relief to hear.”

As he stepped into the shower, Steve took a moment to ponder the day ahead of him. The morning had started far more abruptly and dramatically than he’d expected, so he found himself feeling rather off kilter. Nothing about this situation was the least bit familiar, and he felt entirely unprepared. He mused ruefully that he was definitely a Man Without a Plan at the moment.

They didn’t know how long they’d be caring for the child in his current state. Bruce hadn’t reported any substantial progress in figuring out where he came from, much less how to return him to his original state (assuming he wasn’t a clone or anything permanent), and they didn’t have any sort of a timeline to help them figure out how long it would take to work out exactly what was going on. They’d have to figure out what to do with him for the time being, even if it did end up being temporary. If nothing else, he needed some clothes of his own. He couldn’t keep running around wearing nothing but a giant t-shirt.

He wondered if anyone in the Tower would have the slightest idea how to shop for a small child. He certainly didn’t — pretty much his entire skillset when it came to kids consisted of getting them out of combat zones and then pawning them off on other people the moment a capable adult presented themselves to him.

“This kid is so screwed,” he muttered to himself.

“Pardon?” Jarvis sounded taken aback.

“He’s surrounded by bachelors. Does anyone on the team even know a thing about kids?” he elaborated.

Jarvis paused for a moment. “I am not sure whether it is in my purview to answer that question.”

Steve wasn’t sure what to make of that. “What do you mean?”

“I am not entirely certain whether it would involve betraying a confidence.”

He couldn’t help but wonder whose confidence such a response would betray, and his curiosity was certainly piqued, but Steve figured it would be be far kinder to respect his teammates’ privacy. “Let’s keep it on a need to know basis, then. No reason to go prying into other people’s secrets unnecessarily.”

“Very well. Thank you, Captain.”

“We still need to figure out what to do with the kid, though. He’s going to need some clothes and stuff…” he petered off, feeling lost once more.

“Indeed. Shall I send Mister Hogan out to pick up some supplies?”

Steve nodded, thankful that Jarvis was capable of taking that sort of initiative. “That’s a good suggestion. Yeah, let’s do that. Think he’d know what to get?”

“I have taken the liberty of perusing several parenting sites and assembling a rudimentary supply list. Shall I give you a run down?”

“Thanks, Jarvis. You’re a life saver. I didn’t even know where to start.”

“Very well. As you mentioned, young Sir is in desperate need of attire, as well as some potty training supplies. He would likely also benefit from some age appropriate eating implements and a handful of toys. Additionally, there are a number of discussions of modifications to be done to homes containing small children in the name of child safety.”

“Modifications?” Steve wracked his brain, trying to think of what sort of home modifications kids might need “He seems a bit old for a baby cage…”

“A… baby cage.” The artificial intelligence sounded flummoxed.

“Yeah, you know… the wire baskets you hang outside the window to stick your baby in so it can get some sunshine during the day?”

“Ah, forgive me. Those appear to have been a trend during the time you were a child, Captain, but their popularity was declining even during the time you were still active, and they were phased out entirely during your stint in the ice. No, a great deal of so called ‘baby proofing’ consists of ensuring that access to electrical outlets are blocked, sharp corners are covered, and materials hazardous to a child’s health and safety are properly stored in locked cabinets.”

That did make more sense. “I suppose I’ll have to read up on that when I have a moment. Would you mind compiling some sort of short reading list for me to catch up on?”

“I would be happy to. Shall I—” Jarvis broke off mid-sentence, which was entirely uncharacteristic of him, and Steve froze as the AI’s tone shifted abruptly. “Captain, something has gone wrong with young Sir. He appears to be in great distress. I believe Agent Barton could benefit from some support in the matter.”

Shit. What now?

Steve was out of the door in moments, barely pausing to grab a towel as he dashed out of the bathroom and vault his way down the emergency staircase on his way back down to the common floor.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Afteriwake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/afteriwake/pseuds/afteriwake) made me an [awesome fanmix](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/WIPBigBang2019/works/20626427) with songs inspired by each of the chapters in my story, so I'm adding those songs to the notes of each chapter in case people want to listen to the associated music. The song inspired by this chapter was [Invisible](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9_gWiwAWrA) by the Linkin Park.

After a fully traumatic introduction to the new body Tony found himself sporting through no desire of his own, the day was off to a great start. Between dousing Captain America with urine and having a full on flashback during bath time, he could just imagine what the rest of the day was going to look like. Really. He couldn’t wait to see what they’d be faced with next.

That was when Steve came barreling into the room.

In the nude. Wearing nothing but a towel and soapsuds.

And wielding his shield in front of him as if searching for imaginary foes.

Tony had to admit, the day was looking up somewhat. Those were some damn fine abs on display there, and the droplets of water wending their way down towards the man’s happy trail practically left Steve glistening.

"...Steve? You okay there?" Clint sounded entirely bemused. Tony couldn't blame him, but his eyes were glued to Steve's torso and he couldn't tear them away long enough to check out Clint's reaction.

Steve flushed. "Jarvis said there was some sort of emergency?"

Tony blinked. Oh. He supposed that made sense. Not sure what good the shield was supposed to do against a panic attack, though.

"...yeah, Tony didn't react too well to getting water in his face. I think I scared the poor kid."

Way to talk about a guy as if he isn't even in the room, Barton.

Steve looked even more awkward, if that was even possible. "So I guess the shield was a bit of overkill then."

"Yeah, just a tad." Clint was definitely laughing inside. Tony couldn't blame him. He was, too.

Steve shuffled around a bit. "Um... I suppose I should probably just..."

"Not that I'm not enjoying the show, but yeah, we should probably keep things a bit closer to the PG rating considering how young the audience is."

Well fuck you too, Barton. Way to side with the man in the censorship wars. 

Steve fled with an embarrassed squeak to go put some clothes on. That was a shame. Tony had been enjoying the view. Steve made for some tasty, tasty eye candy.

And yes, the blush went all the way down.

At least the distraction had well and truly pulled him out of his funk. He’d much rather focus on thoughts of half-naked Captain Dorito's sculpted abs than get sucked into a depressing thought spiral about trauma responses.

They managed to get through breakfast with everyone’s dignity relatively intact, although Steve and Clint definitely seemed to be tip toeing around in their attempts to see to Tony’s needs without setting anything off.

It probably helped that Tony was so drained from the morning’s events so far that he couldn’t even work up the energy to feel humiliated by their newest discovery that he couldn’t even operate a spoon. Their first few attempts to allow him to feed himself were a bit of a disaster, so Clint ended up spooning cream of wheat into Tony’s mouth for him. On any other day this might have rubbed Tony the wrong way, but at this point he’d almost given up on the idea of personal pride. If this was what it took to get food in his belly, they’d just all have to deal with it for the time being.

“How’s that, kiddo?” Clint brought another spoonful of gummy cereal mush to his mouth and Tony automatically opened it to accept the offering.

Tony swallowed the mush and made an attempt to answer, hoping against hope that the words would flow more naturally than they had in his earlier attempts to communicate. “Oh fa ooh…” _Gross, thank you. It’s bland flavorless mush. How do you think it is?_ Shit. The words were right there, but they failed to make the transition into sounds.

This inability to verbalize his thoughts was going to drive him crazy. He just knew it. He had all these words aching to burst forth in a stream of nonstop battle to fight against the haze of panicked thoughts, but no way to express them.

He’d always been hyperverbal. It was his first line of defense against everything, whether people encroaching on his space or his own brain’s tendency to torment him. He was good at talking in circles and using verbal gymnastics to talk himself into and straight back out of trouble again. Words were his go-to tool of choice for practically any scenario where things started to go sideways.

And they were beyond reach right now. And for the foreseeable future. And who knew how long that might—

No. He wouldn't go there right now. He couldn't afford another freak out so soon after the last. He'd just have to trust in Bruce. Bruce was a genius. If anyone could work this out, it was Bruce. Tony just had to wait and be patient. 

Ugh.

Those were not his strong suits.

And there was the spoon again. Blech. Yet more bland mush. Joy.

“That’s right! Yum, yum! Tasty cereal. Wasn’t it nice of Steve to make it for you?”

Tony glowered. Way to put words into his mouth, Barton. That was not at all what he had been trying to say, but there was very little he could do to clarify his thoughts when he couldn’t put them into words.

He debated pushing Clint’s hand away or turning his face and refusing to eat, but that seemed like a childish move. He might not’ve second guessed that sort of thing before, but now that he was in the shape of an actual child, the idea of acting like his apparent age made him cringe internally. He was better than that. He was an adult. He could handle this like an actual adult.

…even if it did mean putting up with gross baby food.

It occurred to him that perhaps that was exactly why he should follow through on that impulse after all? It might help cement his cover as a kid.

He grunted in frustration and swallowed another bite of cereal without outward protest as he wrestled with the competing impulses. The stuff might be the most boring food he’d ever eaten, but it was filling and he didn’t particularly care what he ate right now as long as he got something into his system. He’d survived off of chlorophyll shakes and Dum-E’s offerings for far too long to turn his nose up at unappetizing cuisine. And it felt rude and ungrateful to push back when both Steve and Clint had been so accommodating to his needs.

On the other hand, shouldn’t getting away with childish behavior be one of the few side benefits of pretending to be a kid?

But outer appearance aside, he wasn’t a child, and it was one thing to act rude and dismissive towards people who were out to take advantage of him and a whole different kettle to reject people who were honestly trying their best in a difficult situation.

He couldn’t seem to make up his mind, so he settled on glowering and thinking baleful thoughts as he ate.

Steve puttered around the kitchen restlessly as Clint alternated between transferring bites of cereal into Tony’s mouth and tackling his own breakfast, keeping up a bright stream of prattle the whole time. Tony tried to tune him out for both their sakes. The baby talk was just embarrassing on both ends.

He focused instead on monitoring Steve out of the corner of his eye. The man looked almost as freaked out as Tony had been feeling off and on all morning. He kept picking things up and putting them down again, wiping at nonexistent crumbs on the counter top, and stealing glances in Tony’s direction.

Tony couldn’t help but wonder what was on his mind. Was he worried about the fact that Tony was a liability now? Did he blame Tony for this whole debacle? Would he end up kicking him off the team? Would he hold this morning’s awful chain of events against him in perpetuity? See it as proof of how useless and immature he’d always thought Tony to be?

“What are we going to do with him?”

Tony flinched at Steve’s unexpected interjection as it interrupted the ongoing stream of baby talk from Clint’s mouth, then frowned as he processed the man’s words. What would they do with him?

Clint frowned too as he turned to meet Steve’s eyes. “What do you mean?”

Steve ran a hand through his hair, looking frazzled. “What do you mean, what do I mean? What are we going to do with him? We’re not equipped to take care of a kid. I don’t know anything about kids! He’s tiny and breakable and I have no idea what to do! I can’t do this. What if he gets hurt? What if he dies? We’re Avengers! We’re constantly in dangerous situations. It’s not safe! I can’t do this— we can’t do this. We never signed up for this. We signed up for combat and battle, not for babysitting. We get kids to safety and then we hand them over to someone more qualified. We don’t take them into our home like some sort of strays.”

Tony felt a pang of hurt and fear lance through his heart at Steve’s words. He couldn’t be serious, could he? He wasn’t about to just… hand Tony over to someone else as if he was nothing more than a useless burden, was he? Wasn’t Steve the one who kept going on about them being more than just a team? Wasn’t he the one who spouted all that bullshit about bonding and building connections with one another? He couldn’t believe that Steve was the first one to jump ship now that the going got tough.

It just figured. He should’ve recognized the hypocrisy when he heard it. People only ever really meant that sort of thing when it meant Tony had to step outside of his comfort zone, not when it required them to go the extra mile themselves.

Clint seemed to agree with Tony on this. “Whoa there, what are you suggesting? He’s not some random kid, he’s our teammate. He’s not some sort of stray and we’re not just taking him in. He lives here, just like we do. This is his home, too. In fact, it was his home first. It's his name on the lease. He has just as much right to stay here as we do, if not more. And he needs our help. I’m not about to abandon him. Why on Earth do you think it would be okay to just drop him the moment things get hard? I can’t believe you’d even think of foisting him off on someone else.”

“Oh yeah? And what’ll you do if we get called out? Strap him into a baby carrier and bring him along on a mission? We don’t exactly lead child friendly lives, Clint.”

“Hell, if I have to? Sure. But first I’d see if I could get a sitter or something. If nothing else, Phil could probably watch him for a few days. He watches a shit ton of Supernanny— I bet he’s way overqualified for the job.”

Tony’s head bobbed from side to side as he followed their conversation like a ping-pong match. He felt his gut clench at the idea that Steve didn't want him, but he also grimaced at the idea of staying with Agent Agent. The guy had a tendency to threaten Tony with his tazer far more often than Tony was comfortable with. At least he was probably safe as long as he looked like a small child? Even Agent wouldn’t taze a kid, right?

“And where’s he going to sleep? You got a nursery shoved up your sleeve somewhere?”

“Fuck, Steve—”

Tony flinched as the voices got louder and the tones got more strident, feeling very vulnerable and small all of the sudden in a way he hadn’t felt in decades. Echoes of arguments had surrounded him his entire childhood, and this felt disquietingly familiar.

“—Language!”

“—fuck you, I’ll curse if I want. This is Tony Stark we’re talking about. He’s heard way worse.”

Tony felt himself tear up again and he sniffled quietly, trying not to draw attention to himself as the two men volleyed arguments back and forth.

“And this is exactly what I’m talking about, Clint. He may be Tony, but he’s also a kid. We’re not child friendly people.”

“I doubt a little cursing is going to scar the kid for life. And we’ll figure out sleeping arrangements. He can bunk with me if it comes to that. I’m not going to let you foist him off on some strangers just because you’re scared. I’m scared too, but he’s ours and he deserves better than that. We’ll figure this out one way or another, but we’re not just going to give him away like he’s last week’s trash.”

“Clint—”

Clint dropped the spoon he’d been holding with a clatter and full on glared at Steve. “NO, Cap. He’s staying, and that’s final. If you don’t want anything to do with him, well, that’s on you. I’d hoped for better, but you get to make your own choices on the matter. But I’m not about to abandon him. He’s ours. I’m standing by him.”

Tony appreciated the sentiment, and it might have warmed his heart if things hadn’t been so tense. As it was, it was hard to breathe around the familiar notes of panic and uncertainty that suffused the air. He wished they’d stop fighting and make up. He was tiny and helpless in this form and the echoes it brought back from his first childhood were ones he'd far rather avoid reliving. Grownups fighting had always led to trouble for Tony in the long run, and he didn’t know enough about these two adults to anticipate where the danger might arise. He just wanted out.

“I’m not saying we should abandon him. I just think we need to find people who are actually qualified to help!”

Clint stood to face Steve square on, hefting Tony to his hip rather more roughly than he probably intended to do. “Fine. Do that. I’m not turning down help. But he’s staying with me, and that’s that.”

“Clint—”

“Steve.”

“Look at him, Clint. He’s crying.”

Tony cringed as both men turned their attention fully to him, attempting to hide his face against Clint’s shoulder. All that energy lay heavy in the air, and he didn’t want it aimed at him, but he couldn’t do anything to turn it away either. Fuck. He wished more than ever that he had words at his disposal so he could turn the tide of the conversation. He’d learned at a young age how to use his words to deflect attention and blame in situations like these, but that tool had been denied him, and now he was stuck. He wished he were anywhere but here.

“Shit. Tony. I’m sorry, kiddo. I’m sorry. Don’t cry. It’s okay. We’re not mad at you, I promise. It’s okay, kiddo. You’re okay. No one’s going to send you away or hurt you. You’re safe here.” Clint cuddled Tony closer to him, pointedly turning his back on Steve in the process as he attempted to soothe Tony’s tears.

Steve huffed a frustrated sigh. “I’m not out to hurt him, Clint. I just feel like we’re out of our depth here.”

Clint ignored him, bouncing Tony on his hip. “Hey, kiddo, what do you say? Wanna go take a look at Uncle Clint’s room and see what it’ll take to fix it up so it’s safe for you to hang out there with me?”

Tony peered up at Clint with watery eyes, refusing to let them shed any more tears than he could help. He took a look over at Steve from the corner of his eye, trying to gauge what the other man’s reaction would be to that proposition. Clint didn’t miss the glance. “It’s okay, kiddo, Uncle Steve doesn’t have to come if you don’t want him to. He can stay here and clean up after breakfast.”

That was not at all what Tony wanted, and a shot of panic surged through him at the thought. What if Steve really did decide he didn’t want anything to do with Tony? Would he pack up all his stuff and move back to Shield barracks? He didn’t want that. He wanted all his Avengers safe together, here at the Tower in the quarters he’d built specifically to their specifications. What if this was the end of that team? What if Tony was what split them up in the end? He clutched at Clint’s shirt with wide eyes as some of the tears started to spill silently down his face, refusing to obey Tony’s attempts at internal control.

Clint puzzled over that response for a bit before trying again. “I suppose if he promises to behave himself, he could come along. Would you like that better? Would you like Uncle Steve to come with us?”

Steve seemed surprised at the inclusion. “Wait, what?”

Clint gestured to Tony, “Does this look like a kid who feels comfortable letting you out of his sight?”

Steve stepped closer, looking a tad uncertain. “Clint— This is exactly what I mean. I don’t know anything about kids. I only ever have to deal with them long enough to get them to emergency services. He’s not even talking. How should I know what he wants?”

Clint turned back towards Steve where the man was staring pathetically between his two teammates. “Well, for starters, maybe stop acting like he’s some kind of alien? I’m not a mind reader either, but his body language is human enough. We’ll muddle through somehow or another, and I’m sure we can figure things out eventually. Here—”

A moment later, Steve found himself fumbling with an armful of startled child.

“—meet Tony. I think it’s your turn to hold him for a bit. Come on, let’s go see what we can do about my rooms. I think it’s time to start childproofing.”

Steve protested the swap, but Clint ignored him and started moving towards the elevator instead. “Hey Jarvis, let’s go see what we’ve got to do to get rid of the major hazards in there.”

The elevator doors slid open with an ostentatious ding. Tony suspected that Jarvis was no more happy with Steve’s idea to send him away than anyone else in the room was. “Very well, Agent Barton. Would you care for some assistance from the Stark Industries janitorial staff?”

Steve and Tony followed along in Clint’s wake as the agent entered the compartment. “Nah, Jarvis, but thanks. It’s my mess, I’ll see what I can do about it first. We’ll ask for help if it’s too much, but let’s start by seeing what we can do about it on our own.”

“Very good. There are cleaning supplies available under your kitchen sink.”

“Really? Huh. I guess that’ll come in handy at some point.”

Steve looked appalled at that comment. “You didn’t know there were cleaning supplies in your apartment?”

Clint shrugged. “What can I say, Cap? I’m a bit of a slob.”

Tony had the sneaking suspicion that this was about to get interesting.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Afteriwake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/afteriwake/pseuds/afteriwake) made me an [awesome fanmix](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/WIPBigBang2019/works/20626427) with songs inspired by each of the chapters in my story, so I'm adding those songs to the notes of each chapter in case people want to listen to the associated music. The song inspired by this chapter was [Blah Blah Blah](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfJhMfOPWdE) by Armin van Buuren.

When the elevator slid open to reveal Clint’s apartment, they got immediate visual confirmation of Clint's claim to the title of "slob."

The room was fairly empty of furniture, largely limited to the world’s most hideous couch and a coffee table. Oh, and a dump’s worth of trash and weaponry.

The first thing that caught the eye was the trash. There were pizza boxes everywhere. Not all of them were empty. They cluttered all of the available counter space, stacked three deep in some places. The coffee table was equally burdened. Since the kitchen counters and the coffee table were the only other available surfaces, several boxes were scattered across the floor as well.

The second thing to catch the eye was the arsenal.

In a tower full of warriors and assassins, weapons weren’t a hard thing to come by, but Clint seemed to have amassed quite the personal collection, and he didn’t seem to believe in locking it out of reach. Several thin paper targets hung at different heights along the wall, most of them with photos of various people taped to the center. Neat clusters of arrows filled them, sometimes centered in the bull’s eye, others centered in crotches or sunk into targets in fancy patterns. Scraps of torn paper and holes in the plaster showed signs of older targets that used to take up the space.

Tony perked up as he glanced around and took in the details. Those arrows were far from the only weaponry lying around. Other arrows in various stages of assembly were scattered all over, as were several different styles and sizes of bows, a scattering of knives, a handful of grenades, some martial arts equipment, a small collection of swords, a much larger collection of guns, and who knew what else.

Tony hadn’t actually been aware that Clint fought with anything other than bow and arrow, so the sight of the assorted collection visible here was a bit of a revelation. He supposed he’d have to branch out in regards to what sort of toys he offered the man whenever he got back to normal. Clearly the man had a much more varied set of interests than he’d ever imagined.

On closer inspection, Tony started to pick out bits of discarded laundry and empty cans here and there as well. It appeared that Clint really seemed to embrace the lifestyle of bachelor frat boy assassin. You really had to give him props for his dedication to the role.

Steve seemed taken aback, less impressed by the variety of weapons on display and more concerned at the ubiquity of instruments of violence and destruction. And possibly the filth, come to think of it. “You can’t be serious. There’s no way you’re moving a kid into here.”

Clint rubbed a hand against the back of his neck, glancing around sheepishly. “Okay, I know it’s not great, but I’m sure we can sort something out. Any garbage bags under the sink, Jarvis?”

“Certainly, Agent Barton. Might I recommend the industrial strength ones? I think they might be best suited to the task.”

“Thanks, buddy. Okay, I’m just gonna—” Clint darted into the kitchen space to grab a large, unopened box that proved to contain a number of black plastic bags. He started busily shuffling pizza boxes into one of the bags.

Steve shuffled around awkwardly, seeming uncertain of himself. “I don’t think there’s a single safe place to put Tony down in here.”

Clint winced. “Yeah, probably not. It’s my mess anyhow. You shouldn’t have to deal with it. Why don’t you…” he cast about for a moment, then alighted on another monstrosity Tony had somehow managed to miss on the first pass: a 24 inch tv half hidden behind a couple of pizza boxes. “…take a seat on the couch and we can see about finding some sort of child friendly tv program for you to watch while I work? I’m pretty sure I can get PBS or something.”

Tony stared in horror at the device Clint was gesturing to. The screen was minuscule. The body was enormous. It had an honest to goodness built in VCR. It had rabbit ears, of all things. Rabbit ears, wrapped in aluminum foil for better reception. This was Stark Tower, home of high end technology, and Clint Barton’s tv had fucking aluminum foil wrapped rabbit ears.

The depths of despair that encompassed him at that revelation were hard to match. Just the thought that something like this existed in his bastion to futurism, the very idea that in his very own Tower someone might legitimately have tech so horrendous that it struggled to get reception when surrounded on all sides by the most powerful signal around…

It only got worse as the two adults proceeded to try and sort out something to watch with Tony in the room. There was static. There was squealing. He was pretty sure something started sparking.

He cringed. He couldn’t bear this. It was sheer torture. And all this for fucking public broadcast. Not even HBO or any sort of quality shit. Fucking PBS.

On the plus side, at least the fact that Barton’s tv was a piece of shit meant that they didn’t get stuck watching Barney or whatever it was kids watched these days. Tony was pretty sure his brains would have leaked out of his ears if he'd been forced to endure that sort of torment.

They settled on some old Bob Ross reruns instead. Steve seemed enthralled. “Wow! This guy’s amazing. I can’t believe they just put these classes out for free for anyone to access. When I think back to how hard it used to be to pay for lessons… And I certainly never had the money to try my hand at oils. I always heard they were really tricky to work with. I mostly just stuck to charcoal and ink, although I did branch out into water colors on occasion. Oils seem to be a whole different ballgame. I’d love to give them a try. This really makes them seem way more accessible than I’d ever imagined they’d be.”

“Yeah,” Clint agreed from where he was shuffling trash into his third garbage bag, “Bob Ross is the shit. We never had the money for the paints, but I used to love to watch him when I was a kid. Just wait until you meet some of his animal friends.”

“Animal friends?” Steve sounded intrigued.

“Yeah, the guy carries baby squirrels around in his pockets sometimes. And sometimes they show him feeding them or introduce you to deer or shit like that. It’s like he’s some sort of nature whisperer or something.”

Steve seemed too enchanted with the idea to even scold Clint for his language. “How is it that in the past several years of trying to show me how wonderful the future is, not a single person thought to show me the wizard who keeps baby squirrels in his pockets and makes magic on canvas using a knife and paint?”

“Uh…” Clint looked stumped.

Tony felt a bit like an idiot himself. Of course the way to win Steve over to the future would be through art. Hadn’t Aunt Peggy told him endless stories of the little sketches he’d make in the pages of his journal, of the pictures he’d slip to her between missions, of the drawings the Howlies carried around in their pockets? Somehow it just never occurred to him that this might be a way to reach the man. Way to go, genius.

They made it through a couple of episodes while Clint worked.

All told, it didn’t actually take too long for Clint to load up the trash bags and pile the bags up in the elevator to go down to the incinerator or wherever trash went in a building like this. (Tony wasn’t actually all that clear on how that stuff worked - he had people to take care of that sort of thing for him, so all he really needed to know was that it disappeared and didn’t trouble him anymore - but the bags were out of the way now, and that was the important thing.) It was all relatively straightforward and didn’t require making any decisions, so all he had to do was transfer it all into bags and he was all set.

The laundry was similarly simple since they had a service that could take care of the actual washing and folding of the stuff. He just scooped it all into bags and set the bags against the wall to deal with later since he didn’t feel like chancing getting the stuff confused with the refuse they’d piled on the elevator.

The weaponry, on the other hand?

“I guess I need some place to put this stuff to keep it safe,” Clint admitted. “I wouldn’t want to chance anything going wrong.”

They settled on locking it all in one of the spare rooms until they could pick up some dedicated lockable storage solutions.

Frankly, Tony felt rather offended that they thought he’d be stupid enough to mess with equipment like that in his current condition. What did they think he’d do? Put it in his mouth? What kind of idiot did they think he was? Sure, he’d like to mess with the stuff at some point and see what he could do to improve on it, but that could wait until he was in a body that would actually respond properly to his demands. He wasn’t stupid enough to go poking at stuff that could get him hurt when he couldn’t even walk a straight line.

…okay, come to think of it, it was probably a good thing Rhodey wasn’t privy to his innermost thoughts. The guy might feel compelled to share some anecdotes that the Avengers really had no business listening to.

Point being, he might have made some bad calls a time or two (…or a dozen) in the past, but he was older and more mature now. And far less drunk, for that matter. He’d keep his hands to himself.

His teammates seemed to feel otherwise, however. They had Jarvis looking up all sorts of fancy gun safes and such and researching what the highest quality safety ratings available were.

Tony sighed quietly to himself. He supposed he couldn’t blame them considering the fact that he was actively perpetuating the idea that his mental and physical age matched up, but it rankled nonetheless. It was a trap of his own devising, really, but he'd always chafed at rules and restrictions, and childhood seemed to be rife with both. Add in the fact that any attempts to verbalize his thoughts seemed doomed at the outset, and it was the perfect recipe for ongoing aggravation.

This whole situation frustrated him to no end. He wished he could get his hands on something with a decent keyboard so he could at least communicate properly with Jarvis and loop the AI in on his secret, but his teammates seemed hellbent on childproofing the whole apartment and keeping him away from anything that they didn't deem "age appropriate." Hell, he’d give anything for a box of crayons and a good chunk of wall space at this point — those would be age appropriate enough. That was the traditional subject of toddler scribbles, wasn’t it? He'd be down with some scribbling at this point. And Clint was enough of a slob that he was unlikely to put up much of a fuss about it. It wasn’t like they couldn’t paint over it easily enough if it ever came down to that.

But no.

There was nothing to write with or on in this space, and he held faint hope of finding any tech toys around here considering the state of that monstrosity of a television set. He really hoped Bruce was making some progress on sorting this whole situation out. He couldn’t wait to get back to his own body.

Clint finished gathering up the last of the laundry a bit before noon, just in time for their episode of Joy of Painting to wrap up. He poked his head back into the living room to ask Tony and Steve, “How are you guys doing? You about ready for some lunch?”

That was a silly question. Steve was always ready for food.

Tony, on the other hand, took that as a cue to do a moment of self analysis. His body and brain still weren’t syncing up properly, so it took a bit of work to sort out what the different signals meant. He came to a startling realization.

“Potty!” He announced, rather abruptly.

Steve paled and Clint laughed. “I’ve got him. Come on, buddy, let’s show Steve how it’s done.”

Steve thrust Tony in Clint’s direction with far more enthusiasm than Tony considered flattering. “Yeah, sure, you’ve got it. I’ll just wait—“

Clint laughed again as he lifted Tony onto his hip but held off from moving towards the bathroom. “Nice try. How are you going to learn if you don’t come along to observe?”

Tony and Steve eyed him with similar expressions of dismay. Tony couldn’t believe that Clint was proposing to turn his pee break into a spectator sport. “Nuh!”

Steve expressed his reservations with a slightly wider range of vocabulary. “I really don’t think—”

Clint cut him off. “Look, I get that this morning was traumatic for both of you, but if I let you weasel out of this now it’ll never get any less scary. Come on, buck up. It won’t be that bad.” He didn’t give Steve a chance to argue any further, just turned on his heel and swept off. Steve followed along in their wake like a chastened puppy.

Having one person hold on to you and watch while you pee was humiliating and off-putting. Involving two people in the process was even worse. The fact that Tony knew damn well that all three of them were thinking about how he’d doused Steve in pee during a similar experiment that very morning was really just the cherry on top.

Fortunately, it turned out that Clint’s show of confidence wasn’t pure bravado. He was very straight forward and matter of fact about the whole thing, and it did manage to allay some of Tony’s nerves. He also clearly knew a thing or two about potty training little boys, which definitely helped. Considering the issues he’d been having with muscle coordination, Tony wasn’t altogether certain he would have managed to aim properly if he was attempting to stand and shoot into the bowl, but he did just fine aiming straight down while Clint helped him balance on the seat. Altogether a great improvement on the morning’s events despite the fact that it was rather more public and interactive than Tony would have preferred.

“Alright guys, how about some lunch? I was thinking of mac and cheese. That seems relatively kid friendly.”

Tony hadn’t noticed that he was hungry until Clint pointed it out, but now that the topic had been brought up his stomach felt like it was about to drill a hole in his spine. Not that different from the sudden and unexpected bathroom urges, come to think of it. It was like his brain wasn’t properly calibrated for the body he was in and couldn’t process the signals it was given off until they hit a certain threshold and drowned out everything else. That boded ill for the future. If he kept this up, this might well lead to problems.

No one bothered to wait for Tony’s input as Steve and Clint came to an agreement over lunch, which was both understanding and irksome. He was simply dragged along in their wake as Clint carried him to the elevator. “I don’t have much in the way of food up here,” the man explained as they went. “But I know there’s a case of mac and cheese boxes in the pantry on the common floor. Should be easy enough to mix up.”

Steve snuck a not-so-subtle relieved glance towards Clint’s kitchen that heavily implied that he was glad not to have to eat something prepared in that space as he agreed to the proposition. “Sounds good to me!”

Steve ended up doing the heavy lifting when preparing lunch since Clint was holding on to Tony, which led to the discovery that Clint was really invested in interacting with the kid in his arms. It was all kinds of awkward, and Tony found himself wishing that he was back with Steve instead. Maybe it was because Steve had less experience with real children, but the man hadn’t done much more than hold him while they watched tv together upstairs. Clint, on the other hand, was pulling out all stops in trying to keep Tony entertained.

On the one hand, it was sweet of him to try. On the other…

Well.

He tried to play a game of pat-a-cake, but Tony just couldn’t lower himself far enough to act enthralled by such a juvenile endeavor. That led to attempts at other games like singing The Eensy Weensy Spider and The Wheels on the Bus, which also went down like a lead balloon. And the less Tony responded to his overtures, the harder the man tried. He made all sorts of silly faces at him and goofed around, and Tony was sure that if he’d actually been a small child he would have been enthralled. As it was, though, he kind of wanted to hide his own face in second hand embarrassment on the man’s behalf. It was almost physically painful to watch.

Tony was incredibly grateful when Steve finally dished up the pasta, even if Clint did insist on making silly airplane and choo choo engine noises as he helped Tony eat. “Here comes the choo-choo! Chugga-chugga, chugga-chugga choooo chooo!” It took incredible effort on Tony’s part not to roll his eyes at the guy’s antics. He grudgingly opened his mouth for another bite of macaroni as the fork circled around his mouth. It was incredibly tempting to refuse, but that might induce even more concerted efforts to engage and entertain him and who knew what lengths Clint might go to if that happened?

All in all, Tony really didn’t feel like he was doing all that great a job of passing as a small child. If it weren’t for the fact that his body more or less did the trick all on its own, he was fairly certain he would’ve given himself away in under an hour. His natural instincts just didn’t lend themselves to this role, and his secondary impulses all rebelled against the indignities involved. He couldn’t help but wonder how long it would take his teammates to start questioning the act.

And then Clint pulled out a damp cloth to wipe off Tony’s face (because apparently the guy’s aim with a spoon wasn’t nearly as foolproof as his aim with a bow and arrow) and declared that it was nap time for little boys. “Alright, kiddo, I think it’s time for little boys to take a nap. Wouldn’t want you to get over tired and cranky, after all. That wouldn’t be any fun.”

Tony didn’t think he’d ever had a nap time, not even when he was an actual kid. Sure, he’d passed out in the middle of the day on occasion — sometimes even when completely sober, given his tendency to work through the nights — but deliberately setting everything aside for an hour or two in the middle of an afternoon in order to lie down and sleep for a bit? It boggled the mind. He objected loudly and vocally. “Nuh!”

Clint blithely ignored his objections, lifting Tony back to his hip. “You okay getting the dishes, Steve? I’ll just take him upstairs to lie down for a bit.”

Steve nodded. “Yeah, sure. I’d be happy to. Don’t worry about it, I’ve got this.”

Tony did not like being ignored. He knew his verbal capacity at the moment was limited, but it wasn’t so limited that Clint shouldn’t be able to figure out what “nuh” meant, particularly when paired with facial expressions and body language. He doubled down on his objections, shaking his head verbally and struggling in Clint’s grip. “NUH!”

Clint jostled him gently, as if he was in need of soothing. “It’s okay, buddy, we can play with Uncle Steve later. I bet by the time we get up, Uncle Happy will be back and we’ll even have some toys to play with. Won’t that be fun?”

Whoa. Wait. Hold on a second. Uncle Steve? Uncle Happy? What was with the titles? When did that happen? Tony had not agreed to this. He was not okay with any of this. “Nuh,” he insisted. “NUH!”

“I’m sorry, kiddo, I know nap time isn’t the most fun, and we don’t even have any stuffed animals for you to snuggle up with or picture books to read. Maybe Jarvis can pull something up for us in the mean time?” Even as Clint spoke, the man started moving them to the elevator. “Thanks, Steve, we’ll see you in a bit.”

Clint continued to ignore any and all of Tony’s objections. He got them up to the floor Clint and Natasha shared and ushered Tony back into Clint’s en suite bathroom — “Just in case, buddy. I know you just went, but we don’t have any pull ups for you just yet and I’d like you to try for me. We don’t know how good you are about sleeping without protection yet,” — which suggested ominous things about Tony’s near future. Then it was time for bed.

Tony didn’t even get a bed to himself since they didn’t have any child appropriate furniture in Clint’s apartment (yet; apparently Happy had been dispatched to do some shopping for them? Tony wasn’t entirely clear on what all was on the shopping list, so who knew whether there would be a bed for him by night time.) Instead, Clint shoved his mattress — not bed, because Clint apparently didn’t even own a box spring, much less a bed frame, and how horrifying a realization was that — up against the wall and tucked Tony in, then curled up protectively on the outer side of the mattress with Tony between him and the wall.

At least the bedding was clean. Given the state of the suite when they’d started in on it, Tony figured he should probably be grateful for small favors.

Clint dug out a tablet and poked at it for a bit, then turned it so Tony could see what he was looking at. There was a cartoonish picture in bright primary colors, and Clint started pointing to different parts of the illustration as he read out loud in a low voice. “In the great green room, there was a telephone. And a red balloon. And a picture of the cow jumping over the moon…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're in the home stretch now! There should only be one more chapter left to this arc unless I do a silly like I did with this chapter and expand on it exponentially. Don't worry, though - this story isn't the end of the series. It's just the introduction, really. The plot really picks up in the next one.
> 
> (...or the one after that, if I end up writing the Natasha one shot I'm waffling on.)
> 
> This chapter is a fill for my Marvel Bingo square for "Forced to share a bed."


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It took me longer than planned, but here's the updated version of this chapter!
> 
> [Afteriwake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/afteriwake/pseuds/afteriwake) made me an [awesome fanmix](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/WIPBigBang2019/works/20626427) with songs inspired by each of the chapters in my story, so I'm adding those songs to the notes of each chapter in case people want to listen to the associated music. The song inspired by this chapter was [Don't Turn Left](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WykpWsor65U) by Alan Silvestri.

Afternoon heralded the arrival of a handful of supplies, alongside a grumpy Happy Hogan. “I’m a body guard and chauffeur,” he informed Clint and Steve waspishly as he stepped off the elevator with hands full of bags. “Not a personal shopper.”

Steve looked sheepish and a tad guilty at the reprimand. Clint just said, “Thanks, man. We really appreciate the help,” and ushered Happy into his rooms, relieving him of his burden and dropping the bags in a pile on and around the newly cleared off coffee table.

With the coffee pot cleaned and tucked away and all the laundry shuffled down the chute to be washed off site, there really wasn’t much left to the space. The living room housed the ratty old couch they’d sat on this morning and an equally ragged armchair, a battered coffee table, and a tv cabinet that looked like it might well have been plucked straight out of the trash, but that was about it. There wasn’t even a rug to cover the hard wood floors. There didn’t seem to be a dining table or chairs to be found in the whole apartment, and the kitchen didn’t seem to hold much beyond the coffee maker and a collection of take out menus, which Steve had stacked neatly and stashed in one of the drawers.

Clint’s bedroom was equally barren — there was the mattress against the wall and a cardboard box flipped upside down which seemed to serve as a bedside table and held a desk lamp and a digital alarm clock with flashing numbers that suggested it had never been properly programmed. A chest of drawers had been shoved into the walk in closet and whatever clothes weren’t currently out to be laundered were haphazardly stuffed into the drawers. Aside from the guest bedroom that was currently serving as Clint’s personal armory, none of the other rooms appeared to have been touched.

Now that the weaponry and trash had all been dealt with, Tony’s teammates seemed less concerned about his physical safety if he were to roam free as they worked. Steve had swept and mopped while Clint and Tony lay down to rest after lunch, so everything was clean and sanitary. That meant that for the first time all day, both men seemed perfectly comfortable giving Tony reign to roam independently.

They set Tony down on the living room floor next to the couch but a little ways away from the mountain of bags. The tv was set to PBS once more, which was apparently showing Sesame Street this time around, while the three men piled on the couch and the armchair and started to dig through the bags Happy had brought over.

Tony watched the tv for a little bit as the men settled in and sorted through the purchases, and he had to admit that the sketches Sesame Street incorporated to entertain their older viewers were more entertaining than he would have expected, but he quickly discovered a previously unknown loathing for Elmo. Fortunately, now that he’d been let off the leash a bit, he figured he didn’t have to just sit there and passively watch tv. This was as good a time as any to stretch his legs.

Tony was beyond ready for a bit more freedom and independence. He had been starting to feel hemmed in on all sides what with all the constant supervision and hands on interaction. He was more than ready to push forward a bit and explore both his environment and his current capabilities and limitations. Clint’s rooms were far from the most exciting spaces, particularly now that all the interesting stuff had been safely tucked away, but anything was better than nothing. He was all set to poke his nose into every nook and cranny he could find.

…right up until the point when he discovered that this was yet one more thing that his body refused to cooperate with. Tony hadn’t even been trying anything adventurous yet. He’d been relatively cautious about things; he’d already had plenty of proof that his fine motor system was in need of a good tune up, so all he was really aiming for was to stand up and take a walk around the living room while he got his bearing. Tony had even gone as far as to hold on to the couch as he worked on untangling his unwieldy limbs and pulling himself upright.

There was no muscle strain or pain as he worked, so it was clear that his body wasn’t lacking in the physical strength required to perform the tasks he was asking of it. It was just… uncooperative. To the max. The more he thought about it, the more he realized that it was like there was some sort of major signals were misfiring somewhere between his brain and all of the systems it was trying to interface with. He told his fingers to do one thing and the signal went haywire before making it all the way down the chain of command. Commands went sideways or got twisted inside out as they went, and the more systems that had to cooperate with one another in order to accomplish the tasks he asked of himself, the harder it was to keep track of all the required processes.

He was a mess.

Nevertheless, Tony refused to be daunted by the challenge facing him. He wasn’t going to try anything ambitious just yet — he was just going to stand up and walk around a bit — but he would do this. He even managed to get himself more or less upright with the couch to lean on, even if his balance felt way off and his limbs refused to cooperate with one another.

Still, he persevered. He would make this work.

He tuned out the tv and the three men working nearby and focused entirely on what he was doing instead. It was just walking. He could do this. He was Tony Stark. He refused to be defeated by his own body. All he had to do was take a step forward and he’d be good. One step would lead to another, and he’d be cruising. It might take him a bit to get things recalibrated properly, but he knew he was up to the task.

He’d been gearing up to get up and go, but it all came tumbling down around his ears as he overbalanced and… well, went tumbling onto his rear. Before he’d even let go of the couch, to make matters twice as humiliating. It was like he’d just tipped over without any conscious decision on his behalf.

Tony really hated this body. With a passion.

And to make matters worse, the sudden shock had sent tears to his eyes again. At least it wasn’t full on sobs this time around, but still. All this sniffling was undignified. He was heartily sick of crying. He was a Stark. He was better than this.

Clint came swooping in fairly quickly, scooping Tony up into his arms and rubbing his back soothingly. “Hey there, little guy. Took a bit of a tumble there, did you? It’s okay. You’re okay. Come on, why don’t you come over here and see what Uncle Happy brought you?”

Tony glared at Clint in frustration. He knew the man was just trying to help, but this was just a minor stumble. How was Tony ever supposed to work out how to make this body cooperate with him if the other guy never even gave him a chance to push his limits? He tried to push the man away. “Nuh!”

Clint ignored Tony’s protests and carried him around to the front of the couch where Steve and Happy had been unbagging tiny pieces of clothing and plastic dishes, settling into one of the corner spots with Tony in his lap. Tony glowered as Clint made introductions, not particularly in the mood to put on a happy face right now. “Tony, this is Uncle Happy. Happy, this is tiny Tony.”

Happy looked startled at the title “Uncle,” and he examined Tony dubiously. “You sure he’s the boss? He’s kind of a runt.”

Clint shrugged. “My standards of disbelief went out the window when someone took over my brain with the touch of a magic stick. Bruce says the DNA matches, and I believe him. I think Bruce is still leaning towards cloning, but Jarvis doesn’t have any record of anyone but Tony entering the lab before the explosion and the kid was wearing Tony’s clothes when Steve found him, so Occam’s razor and all that.”

Happy gave him a bemused glance. “What do razors have to do with anything?”

Clint shifted a bit awkwardly. “It’s this thing… when there’s two possible explanations, the one that requires the least amount of guesswork is the safest bet. So yeah,” he shrugged. “My money is on something hinky going down in the labs and adult Tony Stark goes in, tiny Tony comes out. Absolutely bonkers, of course, but do you have a better explanation?”

Happy shrugged. “Guess not.” He looked Tony up and down. “Hey there, boss. This is definitely a new look for you.”

Tony transferred his baleful look from Clint to Happy. Neither man seemed affected by the glare. Clint just cheerfully filled in, “He’s not all that talkative yet. I guess it’s something he grew into? Anyhow, I figure that we might as well get him in some clothes that actually fit him now that we have something better than a t-shirt.”

Steve popped up to join the conversation, some clothes in hand from his excavation through the mound of plastic bags. “Think these will do?” He held out a child size shirt with a picture of a fire engine on it and a pair of pants.

Clint nodded. “Might work. Laura says that it’s good to let kids have choices so they can have a bit of control, so maybe grab another one and let Tony pick?”

Steve agreed amiably and offered up another shirt with a dinosaur as well. He held both shirts out in Tony’s direction. “How’s this? Would you like a fire truck or a dinosaur?”

Tony stared at the shirts, trying to work up the energy to care. His life was spiraling out of control here; what did it matter whether the stupid shirt he wore had a fire truck or a dinosaur on it? Either way, he’d still look like a toddler. Everyone was staring at him and waiting for his input, though, and he had to admit that it was nice to have at least the slightest inkling of control over SOMETHING when neither his body nor his teammates seemed inclined to pay attention to his desires, so he selected the dinosaur at random. Steve beamed at him as if he’d done something incredibly impressive. It was hard to believe how far Tony had sunk in the past 24 hours when picking a shirt got that enthusiastic of a response. “The T-rex, huh? Good choice, sport. Hold on, I think some of the pull ups Happy picked up had dinosaurs, too.”

Tony watched in dismay as Steve pulled out a plastic package and fished out a disposable garment. Pull ups? He took it all back. Clearly this was his newest low.

Clint, on the other hand, seemed all too enthusiastic. “Oh! Good call.”

Steve passed the clothes over and Clint proceeded to strip off the t-shirt Tony had been bundled in, leaving Tony freeballing it in the middle of the fucking living room, with no regard for the fact that this was a public space. Tony squawked; he’d often been accused of having no shame, but even he drew the line at stripping down when neither sex nor alcohol were involved.

In keeping with the day’s running theme, his objections were roundly ignored. Tony didn’t even get a chance to try and figure out if he could communicate exactly how much he despised the idea of wearing a pull up before the whole issue was fait accompli. He was really starting to feel incredibly disgruntled about the way people kept manhandling him as if he had no will of his own. It rankled quite a bit.

At least the pull up was less uncomfortable than he would have assumed. It was more a question of the principle of the thing, really, but it was only a little bit bulkier than underwear usually felt. He could deal if he absolutely had to. It just stung that he didn’t seem to have a choice in the matter.

Once the pull up had been taken care of it didn’t take all that much longer to get him into the rest of the clothes they’d picked out. They were still a tad large on him since Happy hadn’t had much in the way of measurements to work with when doing the shopping, but he had to admit that it was a huge improvement over the shirt he’d been wearing before, which had absolutely dwarfed him.

“I hate to admit it, but Stark makes a pretty cute kid,” Steve commented.

Clint seemed to share the opinion. “He sure is! Don’t you, Tony? Such a handsome little boy. Just look at those little cheeks of yours. No wonder you grow up to be such a charmer. I’m sure those eyes just make everyone melt, don’t they?”

Tony wasn’t sure whether to be flattered or mortified by the complimentary baby talk. He was grateful when Happy spoke up and changed the topic. “Think you’ve got everything you need? I don’t have all day.”

Clint nodded gratefully. “Yeah, man. Thanks. You’ve been a life saver.”

Happy grunted awkwardly and moved to leave. “Yeah, sure. Do your own shopping next time. That’s not my job. And fix this. I need my boss back. I liked him the way he was. He can’t sign the checks this way.”

“Not that he ever signed the checks himself, but yeah. Bruce is on it. I’m sure he’ll figure this out before long. We just need to give him time and space to work on the problem.”

“You do that.”

A moment later, he was gone.

Steve started folding clothes neatly and sorting them by type while Clint went digging through the stuff dumped all over the table and pulled out a couple of toys to show Tony, who was propped up in the corner between the arm rest and the back of the couch. “Wasn’t it nice of Uncle Happy to pick this stuff up for you? I know he’s a bit grumpy, but he’s got a good heart. We’ll probably have to pick up some more stuff later, but it was really sweet of him to grab you some stuffed animals and not just the essentials. It’s good for kids to have some toys to play with. We’re not exactly well supplied with that stuff around here.”

Tony stared at the bear Clint was holding out to him, trying to figure out what he was meant to do with it. He couldn’t recall ever owning anything of the sort when he was a kid. Howard had never been much for toys, so as a result, Tony had never been around this sort of thing much. He was vaguely aware that kids were known for making up stories and games with all sorts of things, but he wasn’t sure how to start. There wasn’t exactly an instruction manual and the thing didn’t seem to have any special features to guide him through the process. The bear was fairly generic — a soft brown furry toy with black plastic eyes and lighter brown details — and didn’t appear to have any movable parts. It was exactly what it looked like: a plush toy. No bells or whistles.

Clint made the bear move a little bit and spoke in a low, growly voice. “Hello! Would you like to be my friend?”

Tony stared at Clint.

Clint stared back. He wriggled the bear a little more. Tony kept staring. Clint slumped in on himself. “Not falling for it, huh?”

Tony sighed. He really wasn’t trying to make this harder on his teammates than it already was. He supposed his dignity could survive reaching back to meet the guy halfway. He accepted the bear and held onto it awkwardly, still uncertain what to do with it now that it was in his arms.

Fortunately, any need to continue the pretense of play was forestalled when Jarvis interrupted the interaction. The AI made a quiet noise, which Tony had installed in order to serve as the digital equivalent of Jarvis clearing his throat in order to announce his presence and avoid startling people when he spoke up. Clint didn’t seem to pick up on the signal, but Steve and Tony both perked up at the sound. “Pardon the interruption, but I’m afraid we have some unscheduled visitors.”

“Visitors?” Clint asked as he and Steve exchanged bemused looks.

“Indeed. Colonel Nicholas J. Fury and an unknown companion have just entered the elevator and are making their way up to this floor.”

“Fury?” The confusion remained unabated. “What does he want?”

“I’m afraid he did not deign to disclose the nature of his visit.”

The elevator doors slid open mid-sentence, and two men stepped out. They were remarkably similar in appearance: burly men with dark skin who radiated danger. They were of equal height and bulk and both took up space in the manner of men who were used to carrying authority as they stepped into the room. Where Fury wore an eye patch, the stranger wore dark glasses that obscured both eyes just as thoroughly as the patch hid the one. His suit was more formal than Fury’s black leather duster, but that was offset by the glint of gold in his ears and the tattoos peeking out over his knuckles.

Tony liked to tweak Nick Fury’s nose, but he never forgot that the man had connections and power that made him legitimately dangerous. Now that the man towered over him physically as well, it was hard to dismiss the note of fear that shot through him at the sight. His companion appeared equally threatening, and Tony felt himself all too aware of how small and frail he was at the moment. He was sure his teammates would do their best to keep him safe, but all it would take would be one good blow… Not that Fury had ever given him reason to expect physical violence, but his hind brain didn’t seem to be responding all too well to logical arguments. It was silly and childish, and the logical side of his brain couldn’t explain why he reacted this way, but he still found himself putting the teddy bear between himself and the interlopers and hiding behind it.

“What I want,” Fury proclaimed with a tinge of threat to his tone, “is to know what the fuck is going on and why I had to hear about all of this from Pepper Potts instead of my own damn agents.”

Clint didn’t move a muscle, but he somehow managed to give off the impression of growing a foot taller and inserting himself between Fury and Tony protectively. Tony was glad for his presence. “Sir.”

“Don’t give me that, Barton. I’ve had your back with the WSC regarding the Loki fiasco, and I was the first person in the line of fire when you came out shooting; the least you can do is keep me in the loop.”

Clint lost a touch of his hard edge, but he didn’t move from his protective stance. “Yeah, you did. And that was damn decent of you. I appreciate the support — I know there are plenty of people at Shield that are all too happy to talk shit about me these days, and it would’ve made your life a hell of a lot easier to let them have their way. But all respect, sir, this isn’t Shield business.”

Fury glowered. His voice held a glint of danger as he shot back, “The hell it isn’t! You may have forgotten, Barton, but one of Shield’s major duties is to monitor scientific and technological advances and intervene in cases when they verge onto mad science. Whether we’re onto successful human cloning or looking at a miniature version of Tony Stark himself, this is squarely in our purview and I intend to see to it that all our bases are covered.”

Tony’s hackles rose as he started to wonder what Fury’s end goal here was. He eyed the two intruders warily. Surely Fury would have brought more back up if he intended to snatch Tony from under Captain America’s own nose? Unless he expected Steve to capitulate willingly.

Tony was not the only one sizing the men up. Steve moved to insert himself between them and Tony, backing Clint up. “Thank you for your concern, Director, but I assure you we’ve got this all handled. We’ll be sure to reach out to you if we need any assistance in the matter.”

Fury snorted. “No offense, Captain, but I think this is all a little out of your area of expertise. Unless you’re about to tell me you were a kindergarten teacher in another lifetime.”

Steve gave Fury an equally dubious glance. “And I suppose you were?”

“Hell no, that’s what Mister Bubbles is here for. This is all on him.”

All eyes turned to the man who’d accompanied Fury into the room. He looked like one of the least child friendly people Tony had ever come across. He gave off an air of silent menace that seemed like it would belong better in a biker gang than at a child sized table. Steve injected his own doubts into his tone of voice when saying, “Mister… Bubbles. That’s a strange—”

Mister Bubbles interjected in a way that suggested that he’d heard it all before, “—Yes, I know. We’re getting off topic.”

“Fair enough. Well, I don’t know why Director Fury felt like he had to drag you all the way over here, but I’m afraid it was a waste of your time.”

Mister Bubbles slowly lowered his sunglasses and sized up Steve and Clint, his deep voice carefully even as he responded. “That remains to be seen.” He pulled a card out of his coat pocket and extended it towards the two superheroes. Steve accepted it stiffly, not bothering to peruse it. “My only concern here is Tony’s well being.”

Clint crossed his arms defensively. “Tony is perfectly fine here with us.”

The man’s eyes took in the barren room with its shoddy furniture and the mountain of new purchases piled on the coffee table, missing nothing. “I’m sure you think so.” He moved past Steve and Clint to kneel in front of Tony, solemnly extending a hand. “Hello, Tony. It’s nice to meet you.”

Tony noted stark black tattoos on the man’s knuckles as he eyed the hand in front of him, feeling a tad off guard. This was the first time someone had treated him without the least bit of patronization since waking up that morning and he appreciated the gesture, but the fact that it came from someone who’d come barging into his tower at Nick Fury’s side unannounced and uninvited gave him pause. He wasn’t sure how he should be reacting right now, particularly since he was trying to pretend to be a child in spirit as well as in form. As Tony Stark (tm), he’d respond to attempts at intimidation with bluster and bullshit, but he was just Tony right now, and he didn’t know how just Tony — a small child dependent on the adults around him for support and protection — would respond to a giant man who was threatening to take him away from his teammates.

Although, when you put it like that…

He glanced over at Steve and Clint, trying to take his cue from them, but they were too busy glaring at Fury to catch his look. That was no help at all. Tony shrank back in on himself a little, curling up defensively.

Mister Bubbles flexed his hand, joints cracking, and pulled it back nonchalantly. “I’m a social worker,” he continued, as if Tony had asked him a question.

Clint snorted. “You don’t look like a social worker.”

Mister Bubbles didn’t react to the clear doubt in Clint’s voice. “I’m a special classification.”

Fury jumped in. “He works with us on the special cases. It’s his job to interface between SHIELD and child services when our operations involve kids. Think of him as a sort of social worker who’s armed and authorized to shoot you between the eyes if your dumb ass endangers a child’s life unnecessarily.”

“We’re getting off the subject. Tony, are you… happy here?”

The word sounded alien in the man’s mouth and Tony ached to crack a joke to break the tension, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t even verbalize a coherent answer. He whined in frustration and leaned into the one childlike thing he’d figured out how to do: he held his arms up towards Clint in a nonverbal demand to be picked up and said, “Potty!”

As far as get out of jail free cards went, that really was the magic word. Clint just shrugged and said, “Sorry, guys, looks like nature is calling. We’ll have to table this for now,” and swooped in, swinging Tony onto one hip and grabbing a couple of things off the table as they walked past. A moment later, they were out of the tense room and had some room to breathe. Tony wished he could pull this trick on board meetings. It was pretty great.

Strangely enough, once they got out of the living room, Clint slowed down some instead of keeping up the brisk pace he’d been maintaining. He meandered slowly towards the bathroom, not bothering to meet Tony’s eyes, and casually asked, “So, did you really need to go potty or did you just need a break?”

Tony hesitated, taken aback. He hadn’t realized that he was being quite that transparent. He wondered if he should try and bluster through this, although Clint didn’t seem too offended at the ploy. It was probably too late to convince the man that the need was genuine — even if Clint hadn’t implied as much already, his moment of hesitation would likely have given the game away — but he still gave it a shot. Besides, considering how ineffective his natural warning system seemed to be at the moment, it wouldn’t hurt anything to hit the head as a preventative measure even if the need wasn’t dire just yet. “Potty?”

Clint laughed. “Yeah, sure. Okay. It can’t hurt to try anyway. And besides, we need to try out this awesome potty seat Happy picked out for you!”

They did eventually make their way back to the living room, but the breather was worth it. He still wasn’t sure what to make of Mister Bubbles or how to handle his questioning when he had yet to work out a reliable mode of communication or figure out how to fake the innocence and ignorance of true childhood, but at least he’d had a chance to prepare himself for the interaction instead of just being ambushed out of the blue. Tony felt less off balance when it was time to rejoin the others.

“There you are!” Steve greeted them warmly as Clint walked back into the room with Tony on his hip. “Everything go okay?

Clint nodded. “Yup! Little guy’s doing great. How are things going in here?”

Steve smiled. “We’ve been making some progress on negotiations. Tony’s not going anywhere. Mister Bubbles is going to be checking in on us every so often to make sure he’s in good hands, but he’s willing to cede guardianship to us as long as we’re open to a certain level of supervision until he’s convinced that we’re up to the task. We’re just working on a cover story for the official paperwork right now.”

Tony was rather surprised to discover that they’d made that much progress in their absence, but he felt a tentative curl of pleasure at the fact that Steve had stood by them despite the doubts he’d been voicing earlier.

Clint was focused on another aspect of Steve’s words, however. “Oh shit! I hadn’t even thought of making this official. What have we got?”

Steve sent him a mildly reproving glance. “Language!”

“Come on, man. We’ve been over this already. I’m sure he’s heard way worse.”

Steve shook his head, clearly unconvinced, but stuck to the original topic instead of letting himself get side tracked. “We’re not exactly qualified to act as foster parents. We haven’t gone through the process, and with the assorted criminal records on the team—”

Clint grimaced. “Yeah, I can see that being a problem.”

“So we were leaning more towards a more traditional custody arrangement.”

Tony eyed Steve in confusion. What did he mean by that?

Clint sounded equally uncertain. “Traditional?”

Steve nodded. “It’d take a lot more pull to get him taken away if he’s biologically one of ours.”

Wait. What? He couldn’t possibly mean—

“And by one of ours you mean—”

Steve shrugged uncomfortably. “Can’t be mine or Bruce’s. We don’t want kidnapping attempts in order to discover whether a child of mine inherited the superserum, and considering Ross's attitude towards the Hulk... Probably best if we don’t try and set him up as Thor’s for similar reasons, even if Thor were around enough to play the part. That leaves you or Natasha…” He trailed off, sounding a bit uncertain.

Clint sighed. “And Nat isn’t here. So I guess I’m a father now.”

Steve nodded. “You okay with that?”

Clint grimaced. “I was the one who insisted he had to stay with us. I suppose it’s just as well. Just hella weird.”

Fury jumped in, sounding perfectly fed up with the whole thing. “Okay, glad that’s settled then. Shield offers six months of paternity leave. That should give you enough time to sort things out.” Everyone blinked at him in startlement, but he didn’t wait for them to respond. “Barton, I expect you to keep me in the loop. Your business is my business. No more secrets. I expect regular updates, understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. I’ll let you go back to playing family, then. I see no more reason for me to stick around.” Fury swept off towards the elevator.

Mister Bubbles lingered a moment longer, lowering his sunglasses a touch to eye Steve and Clint dubiously. “I’ll be back.”

A moment later, the room was down to just Avengers. Clint dropped down onto the couch, shifting Tony into his lap as he went. “Phew!”

Steve took his seat a little more gracefully. He watched the other two with a small smirk at the corner of his mouth. Clint bristled a bit. “What’s so funny?”

Steve laughed. “Congratulations, it’s a boy!”

Clint choke.

Tony froze. Shit. Had Clint really just signed up to play the role of Tony’s father? Awkward. Legal pretense or not, Tony didn’t exactly have the best associations with that term. Not that Clint would make a bad Dad — over the past 24 hours, Tony’d seen enough of what the man was like around kids to suspect he’d probably make a really good one if he wanted to make a go of things — but Tony certainly didn’t need a father figure in his life, much less a father figure who was several years his junior, if one wanted to get technical about it.

Not that they would take the whole thing seriously. Right?

He hoped they didn’t. That would be way too weird.

Probably best to assume that part was just a cover story, even if it did warm his heart a bit to know that his teammates were willing to participate in such a ruse when push came to shove. He wondered how this would all play out over time if Bruce didn’t find a solution before long. Would Tony be able to maintain this charade over time? How long would they keep him around if they couldn’t fix him? Would they miss Iron Man? Would they miss Tony himself? And what would they do with him if this was the new status quo?

It was a cringeworthy thought, but as long as the team stuck by him, he thought he could manage okay. If nothing else, eventually he’d find some interface to let him communicate with Jarvis. Tony was fairly certain that would make all the difference.

And in the mean time? Look at it like a vacation of sorts. Lean into it. Learn to relax a bit. How hard could it really be?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The other surprise inclusion for this chapter was Nick Fury, whom I brought in specifically as a nod to my MCU Bingo square for "Pirates."


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sharing information regarding the updates to this story as well as the awesome fanmix that [afteriwake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/afteriwake/pseuds/afteriwake) made for it

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've finished updates on the last chapter of this fic, and I think it's much improved. I ended up rewriting pretty much the entire thing, so it might be worth a look if you're interested.
> 
> The next story in the series is in the works, and I hope that you'll enjoy it when it comes out!

[Afteriwake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/afteriwake/pseuds/afteriwake) made an awesome fanmix for this fic. I've added links to the songs on each of the associated chapters, and you can find the mix itself here on [AO3](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/WIPBigBang2019/works/20626427) as well as on [8tracks](https://8tracks.com/afteriwake/whoops-i-slipped-a-fanfic-inspired-avengers-fanmix)!


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